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

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      Donald Trump

      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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      What you need to know about the first and only vice-presidential debate

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      It’s been a chaotic few days since Donald Trump was hospitalized after testing positive for coronavirus. But there’s a chance for something approaching an episode of normality in US politics on Wednesday, when the first and only vice-presidential debate takes place.Democratic challenger Kamala Harris and Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, will face each other in Utah, where debate organizers have been forced to take extra precautions after Trump and a growing number of his entourage came down with Covid-19 shortly after last week’s first presidential debate.The coronavirus crisis is expected to dominate the proceedings. Having downplayed the risk and impact of Covid-19 for months, Trump has continued to disregard medical advice even after his diagnosis, and left hospital on Monday to return to the White House.Here’s what you need to know.When is the debate?It will begin at 9pm eastern time (ET) on Wednesday, and run until 10.30pm ET.Where is it?Salt Lake City, Utah – specifically, at the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall. In election terms, Utah is strategically unimportant. It’s a solidly Republican state that last backed a Democrat in 1964, and Trump, while unpopular in Utah, is still expected to win there in November.Who is moderating?Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today and a biographer of former first lady Barbara Bush.In September, USA Today was forced to defend Page, after it emerged she hosted a “Girl’s Night Out” party at her home to honor Trump health official Seema Verma.Details of Page’s party, held in November 2018, emerged after a congressional investigation into Verma.USA Today said Page spent $4,000 of her own money hosting the event. The newspaper said the event was intended to honor both Republican and Democratic women, and fell “well within the ethical standards that our journalists are expected to uphold”.Fox News host Chris Wallace faced much criticism after he had the difficult task of hosting the first presidential debate, which descended into chaos as Trump repeatedly interrupted both Wallace and Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden. The vice-presidential debate is expected to be more civil.What’s the format?There’ll be nine 10-minute segments, and each candidate will have two minutes to respond to the opening question in each segment.This should mean more topics can be covered than in the presidential debate, which was divided into six sections.What are they going to discuss?Page hasn’t revealed the topics yet, but coronavirus is likely to be at the top of her list.On Tuesday public health experts said Trump had endangered Americans by saying people should not fear coronavirus, while a mask-free event at the White House has been linked to a number of government-officials falling ill.Pence, who served as head of the coronavirus task force, is likely to be asked about the government’s efforts to combat the virus, which has now killed 210,000 people in the US.Are there any extra coronavirus protections?The Biden-Harris campaign asked the commission on presidential debates to adopt more protective measures after Trump contracted coronavirus last week.Harris and Pence will be 13ft away from each other – in the presidential debate Biden and Trump were 7ft apart – and there will be a plexiglass barrier between the candidates.Pence’s staff has mocked Harris’s push for stricter safety measures.“If Sen Harris wants to use a fortress around herself, have at it,” Pence spokeswoman Katie Miller told Axios.The university of Utah ran a lottery to decide which students would attend the debate. Fewer than 100 students will be allowed in Kingsbury Hall, and face masks will be mandatory.How are Harris and Pence preparing?Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor who ran against Harris and Biden for president before Biden emerged as the candidate, has taken on the role of Pence in a series of mock debates. Buttigieg, like Pence, is from Indiana, although the two are eons apart politically and personally.Harris, a former prosecutor, won rave reviews for her performance in an early Democratic debate, when she criticized Biden for his record on race.Axios reported that Harris had similarly planned to go on the attack on Wednesday, tying Pence to Trump and rebuking the pair over their coronavirus response, healthcare and beyond. The California senator had apparently “planned a handful of anti-Trump zingers”, but given the president’s ill-health, she will tone it down.Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general, has been helping Pence with his debate prep, filling in for Harris. Some of Pence’s preparation has involved developing ways to attack Harris “without opening himself up to criticism that he is acting in a disrespectful or sexist way”, according to NBC News.How can I watch?ABC, CBS, CNN, C-Span, FOX and NBC will all stream the event, according to the commission on presidential debates. News channels Fox News and MSNCBC will also feature the debate, and it will be available on the websites of most of those channels.Outside the US, viewers can watch the debate on C-Span, a non-profit bipartisan cable channel which televises government proceedings. C-Span will run coverage on its website and YouTube channel.The Guardian will also be streaming the debate, as well as offering live coverage, fact-checking and analysis. More

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      Biden denounces hate and calls for US unity in 'house divided' speech at Gettysburg – video

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      Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has called for the US to put politics aside and unite as the country faces ‘too many crises’. Speaking at Gettysburg, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the US civil war, Biden said he decided to run for president after the far-right rally and resulting violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. ‘It was hate on the march in the open. In America,’ he said. ‘Hate never goes away. It only hides. And when it’s given oxygen, when it’s given an opportunity to spread, when it’s treated as normal and acceptable behaviour, we’ve opened a door in this country that we must move quickly to close’
      ‘Again we are a house divided’: Joe Biden calls for unity in Gettysburg speech
      Trump aide Stephen Miller tests positive for Covid-19

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      'Again we are a house divided': Joe Biden calls for unity in Gettysburg speech

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      US elections 2020

      Democrat issues rebuke of president’s leadership and addresses coronavirus, racial injustice and hyperpartisanship

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      Biden denounces hate and calls for US unity in ‘house divided’ speech at Gettysburg – video

      Joe Biden delivered a forceful appeal for national unity from the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, as the nation lurched from crisis to crisis and the president continued to downplay the severity of the coronavirus after being hospitalized for Covid-19.
      From the storied civil war battlefield of Gettysburg, a symbol of the divisions that nearly tore the nation in two, Biden cast the election as a “battle for the soul of the nation” and emphasized the stakes this November.
      “Today, once again we are a house divided,” Biden said, framed by a row of American flags with the rolling hills of Gettysburg behind him. “But that, my friend, can no longer be. We are facing too many crises. We have too much work to do. We have too bright a future to leave it shipwrecked on the shoals of anger and hate and division.”
      In a sweeping speech – one that drew on Abraham Lincoln’s address at the same spot, the site of one of the war’s bloodiest battles, and Lyndon Johnson’s remarks from there one hundred years later – Biden warned of the “cost of division” and his fears that partisanship threatened to undermine the central pillars of American democracy.
      Biden vowed to govern as an “American president”, one who would seek bipartisan solutions to the nation’s most consequential problems, including the coronavirus pandemic, racial injustice and economic turmoil.
      Though he did not mention Trump by name, Biden’s remarks amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of the president’s leadership in the wake of a global pandemic that has killed more than 210,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president and a widening circle of White House aides and allies. Lamenting the politicization of science and facts, he called for a national strategy.
      “Wearing a mask isn’t a political statement – it’s a scientific recommendation,” Biden said, a surgical mask clenched in his fist. “We can’t undo what has been done. We can’t go back. But we can do better.” More

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      'Racism, fear, division': Michelle Obama attacks Trump in election plea – video

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      In a speech highly critical of the president, the former first lady made an impassioned plea to Americans to vote for Joe Biden in the election on 3 November. Among the condemnations of Trump’s presidency, she criticised his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying he ‘doubled down on division and resentment’, adding: ‘What the president is doing is, once again, patently false … it’s morally wrong … and yes, it is racist’
      ‘Fear, division, chaos’: Michelle Obama video blasts Trump over racial injustice
      Donald Trump rebuked for removing mask after leaving hospital – US politics live

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