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      Donald Trump says catching Covid-19 was 'like a blessing from God' – video

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      Donald Trump has described getting Covid-19 as ‘a blessing in disguise’ in a video delivered outside the Oval Office. Trump described his three-night stay at Walter Reed medical center, referring to the treatment he received as a cure, and promising to make it available to all Americans. ‘I want to get for you, what I got and I’m going to make it free. You’re not going to pay for it,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault that this happened. It was China’s fault. And China is going to pay a big price – what they’ve done to this country. China is going to pay a big price.’ Covid-19 has killed more than 210,000 Americans and over a 1 million people worldwide in 10 months
      Trump calls Covid diagnosis ‘blessing from God’ amid false treatment claims
      Coronavirus live news: Brazil cases pass 5m; Trump calls catching Covid ‘a blessing in disguise’

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      Facebook announces plan to stop political ads after 3 November

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      Facebook has announced significant changes to its advertising and misinformation policies, saying it will stop running political ads in the United States after polls close on 3 November for an undetermined period of time.The changes, announced on Wednesday, come in an effort to “protect the integrity” of the upcoming election “by fighting foreign interference, misinformation and voter suppression”, the company said in a blogpost.Facebook’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, had previously defended the controversial decision not to factcheck political advertising on the platform, but in recent weeks Facebook has begun to remove political ads that feature dangerous and misleading claims.In early September, the company pledged to stop running new political ads one week before 3 November, the day of the United States elections, to prevent last-minute misinformation. Now it will also disallow political advertising entirely following election day “to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse”.In other words, Facebook will not allow new advertisements starting one week before 3 November, and immediately after polls close it will stop running all political advertisements indefinitely. The company did not give a timeline for if or when political advertising would return.The new policies mark important progress toward protecting elections, said Vanita Gupta, the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of dozens of nonprofits and human rights groups advocating for democracy.“We are seeing unprecedented attacks on legitimate, reliable and secure voting methods designed to delegitimize the election,” Gupta said. “These are important steps for Facebook to take to combat disinformation and the premature calling of election results before every vote is counted.”Others said the change is too little, too late. Senator Elizabeth Warren called the changes “performative”. The internet freedom group Fight for the Future said in a tweet the change “isn’t going to fix the problem at all”. The group noted that Facebook’s recent decision to allow content from private groups to appear in newsfeeds will increase misinformation and negate any positive changes that come from an advertising ban.“Facebook is banning political ads but at the same time they’re tweaking their algorithm to go into overdrive recruiting people into groups where they’ll be spoon-fed manipulation and misinformation,” Fight For the Future said.Facebook is again making performative changes to try to avoid blame for misinformation on its platform. The problem isn’t the ads themselves. The problem is Facebook’s refusal to regulate its ads, change its broken algorithm, or take responsibility for the power it’s amassed. https://t.co/OkkyM1PtML— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 7, 2020
      Facebook is seeking to avoid another political disaster after it was found that Facebook was used by Russian operatives in 2016 to manipulate the United States elections.Since then, Facebook has hired thousands of people working on safety and security surrounding elections and has worked on more than 200 elections around the globe, “learning from each” and making “substantial progress”, the company said.Executives at Facebook, including Zuckerberg, reportedly became increasingly alarmed at language from Donald Trump suggesting the president would not participate in a peaceful transfer of power. Trump has also been accused of encouraging violence when he told white supremacists to “stand back and stand by” and encouraged supporters to “go to the polls” and “watch very carefully” at the first presidential debate.The company also said it will be removing calls for people to engage in poll watching that use “militarized language” or suggest the goal is to intimidate voters or election officials.Zuckerberg has previously expressed concern about challenges posed by the surge in mail-in ballots this year due to the pandemic.“I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country,” he said.Facebook said it would respond to candidates or parties making premature claims of victory, before races were called by major media outlets, by adding labels and notifications about the state of the race. More

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      Kamala Harris and Mike Pence clash over coronavirus response in vice-presidential debate

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      Vice-President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris clashed over the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus in the only vice-presidential debate of the 2020 election, at a moment of extraordinary uncertainty for the US in the wake of the president’s hospitalization for Covid-19.“The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” Harris said in her opening comments to Pence, who leads the White House’s coronavirus task force. “This administration has forfeited their right to re-election.”Pence acknowledged that the nation has gone through a “very challenging time this year”,but forcefully defended the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic that has killed more than 210,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president of the United States and many top White House officials.“I want the American people to know, from the very first day, President Trump has put the health of America first,” he said. Promising a vaccine for the virus before the end of the year, he accused Harris of undermining faith in a potential treatment and “playing politics with people’s lives”.Harris said she would take the vaccine if it was endorsed by public health experts, but “if Donald Trump tells us to take it, I’m not taking it”.In a sign of the extent to which the outbreak has reshaped the 2020 campaign, the candidates were seated 12ft apart and separated by plexiglass dividers, a request by the Biden-Harris campaign that the Pence team initially objected to. In the auditorium at the University of Utah, any guest who refused to wear a mask was to be removed.The debate unfolded in the shadow of Trump’s diagnosis with a potentially fatal disease, which renewed focus on the advanced age of the septuagenarian presidential candidates ahead of Wednesday night’s debate in Salt Lake City. Trump is 74 and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, is 77.As such, the forum served not only as a preview of the leading presidential contenders in 2024, but as a grim reminder that the role of vice-president is to succeed the president should he become incapacitated or die while in office.Neither Pence nor Harris directly answered a question about whether they had discussions about taking over the presidency.Given the uncertainty hanging over future presidential debates due to the president’s infection, Pence and Harris were under additional pressure to articulate their campaign messages.Polls show that a majority of Americans no longer trust Trump to handle the virus and blame his administration for failing to control it. Trump, who claimed he had “learned a lot” about the virus from his own experience with it, has since downplayed its severity, likening it to the flu and urging Americans not to be afraid of it.In a video shared shortly before the debate on Wednesday, Trump called his infection a “blessing from God” and said everyone should have access to the experimental treatment he was given during his hospitalization.Harris, who was elected to the Senate in 2016 and unsuccessfully ran for president against Biden last year, is the first woman of color to participate in a vice-presidential debate. Over the course of 90 minutes, she will attempt to make the case that the Trump administration has failed in its response to the coronavirus, and the economic fallout, without going too far to antagonize the president while his prognosis remains unclear.The vice-president has tested negative for Covid, but there was some question about whether he should participate in the debate given his potential exposure. The virus has now infected several members of the White House staff, as well as several US senators and military officials.The candidates have spent weeks preparing. Harris, a former prosecutor, has gained a national reputation for her sharp cross-examination of powerful men – from administration officials who came before the Senate judiciary committee to Biden, whom she confronted during a primary debate last year.In 2016, Pence delivered a clean performance, skillfully defending Trump while relentlessly attacking Hillary Clinton. Since then, he has proven to be a loyal lieutenant of the president and a more disciplined messenger of the administration’s agenda. More

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      Battle for the suburbs: can Joe Biden flip Texas? – video

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      Texas is a rapidly changing state with the fastest growing population in the US. Hispanic Texans are expected to become the majority by 2022, but will this help Joe Biden flip a Republican stronghold? Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone travel to suburban Dallas and the border city of McAllen to look at the political impact of this diversification and the legacy of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies 
      Troubled Florida, divided America: will Donald Trump hold this vital swing state? – video

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      'I'm back': Trumpworld shows no sign of changing after Covid-19 diagnosis | Analysis

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      Analysis: any hope the president and his allies would change his tune on the virus quickly dissipated

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      Donald Trump appears short of breath during maskless photo op at White House – video

      There was a school of thought that Donald Trump might be humbled by becoming infected himself with the coronavirus, see the light and encourage Americans to stay safe. It lasted about as long as the hope that he would “pivot” to a traditional presidency after his inauguration.
      Instead Trump has sought to project the strongman image, flying to the White House by helicopter at sunset, standing on the balcony and taking off his face mask while still contagious, bragging that he feels better than he did 20 years ago and urging the public to neither fear the virus nor let it dominate their lives.
      His campaign has sent out fundraising emails preaching a similar if-I-can-beat-it-so-can-you-message, hoping to turn personal and political disaster to their electoral advantage against the cautious Joe Biden. It is very on-brand for a president who views illness as a weakness and seeks each day to make himself the hero of his own reality TV show.
      “He’s operated in kind of cartoon icons his entire career, with iconic images and symbols of being a magnate, owning a football team, an airline, casinos, Mar-a-Lago,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. “All these symbols of unbelievable riches were really powerful – that was a very successful manoeuvre and he’s kept it up. So now these photo ops that look ridiculous and dangerous have a certain resonance. Of course he’ll keep doing that.
      “Now he is going to be an ‘expert’: he’s had it so nobody can tell him anything. If he ever even paused for a second for any medical advice before, that’s over. He knows more about wars than the generals; he will now know more about the coronavirus than any doctors.”
      Trump, a disciple of the book The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, seems determined to wish his own serious condition away even if it means endangering his staff, Blair added. “All the people that he’s exposing by this, the poor Secret Service, the medical personnel, the pilots on the helicopter, all the White House staff. It’s mind-boggling.”
      After Trump was discharged from Walter Reed military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on Monday night, his campaign sent fundraising emails with the subject headings, “I’M BACK!”, “Did you miss me?” and “Best I’ve felt in 20 years!” They told supporters: “I’m telling you: Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life!”
      The messaging was, as so often, amplified by Republican allies and conservative media. Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida tweeted: “President Trump won’t have to recover from COVID. COVID will have to recover from President Trump. #MAGA.”
      Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia tweeted an old video clip of Trump body-slamming a man outside a wrestling ring, but with a Covid-19 image superimposed on the man’s head. She added later: “@realdonaldtrump has shown he’s a FIGHTER and a WINNER He fought the Russia hoax and WON. He fought the sham impeachment and WON. Now he’s fighting the virus and he’s still WINNING.”
      And Sean Hannity, a Fox News host, even compared Trump to the wartime leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, suggesting that the president was offering a new version of “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
      Trump himself, still receiving treatment and with the potential to suffer a relapse, returned to old form on Tuesday with a barrage of tweets, from “FEELING GREAT!” to promising to take part in next week’s presidential debate to mocking “Mini Mike Bloomberg” to abruptly calling off negotiations with Democrats over Covid economic relief funding until after the election. Stocks plummeted.
      As a public health example, it has been described as irresponsible to the point of criminal, the exact opposite of what a medical professional would advise.
      Zac Petkanas, director of the coronavirus war room at the health pressure group Protect Our Care, said: “What’s so shocking to me is that not only are the signals that Donald Trump is sending by removing a mask and not engaging in social distancing clearly bad for public health, sending a terrible example to people, but it’s also bad politics.
      “The American people overwhelmingly side with experts and science; they want their leaders to encourage them to make smart decisions to keep their families safe. And so Donald Trump is not only prolonging the pandemic by telling his supporters that wearing a mask is a political statement instead of a public health necessity, he is in fact hurting himself with voters he should be trying to woo right now in order to keep his job.”
      Petkanas added: “It’s baffling on all fronts and I would chalk it up to the medication that he was given – except this is the way he has been behaving since he descended from the escalator in 2015. This is just who he is.”
      Trump has spent much of the year downplaying the virus, holding campaign rallies with little physical distancing and mocking Biden for wearing a mask. But the former vice-president has a 16-point lead over Trump among likely voters nationwide, according to a CNN poll published on Tuesday.
      Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “You’re going to have potentially his supporters getting more energetic on account of this. One of his big problems is getting blue collar whites who support him out to the polls; they don’t have a high turnout record and that’s where his vote is.
      “So maybe this helps with them but you don’t win votes on this basis. He has been so irresponsible and everyone sees it. The whole year has been of a piece. I think he is angry at the virus for ruining his re-election chances.”
      Moe Vela, a former senior adviser to Biden at the White House, added:
      “It’s just another part of their divisive, hateful, them-versus-us mentality. But it alienates the rest and I have bad news for them: the rest is a lot larger number than his base.”

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