US election roundup: Trump claims he ‘ended’ the pandemic as cases surge

The deluge of early votes for Tuesday’s US presidential election has topped 70m – the equivalent of more than half of all votes cast in 2016 – as Donald Trump brazenly listed one of the highlights of his presidency as “ending the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Trump’s claim, delivered in a White House press release, came in a week that has seen days of record new infections, daily deaths running at almost 1,000 a day, and a 23% increase in cases.

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As the US president prepared to return to the key battleground state of Florida for a rally in Tampa on Thursday, Trump and his campaign continued to pursue its tactic of minimising a pandemic that has claimed at least 226,000 lives and continues to rage in many parts of the country.

While Biden entered the final week of campaigning with a nine percentage point lead in national polls, the margin in key battleground states – including Florida and Pennsylvania – remained closer.

In some hotly contested states, turnout for early voting was even higher than the national figure, including Florida, where the equivalent of two thirds of those who voted in 2016 have voted.

In Texas – which the influential Cook Political Report on Wednesday moved from “lean Republican” to a “toss-up” between Biden and Trump — the figure was 87%.

But it was the coronavirus pandemic that continued to dominate the agenda. Asked about the Trump’s claim to have “ended it”, even the White House communications director, Alyssa Farah, struggled to defend the assertion.

“I think that was poorly worded,” Farah told Fox news. “The intent was to say that it is our goal to end the virus. But what I would say is this, because of the president’s leadership, we are rounding the corner on the virus.”

In the last week of campaigning, Trump has continued to cleave to the antagonistic and often untruthful approach that has marked the four years of his presidency.

That has included abusing rivals and making wildly exaggerated claims – not least about a pandemic, and his chaotic handling of it.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the coverage of coronavirus has been weaponised by the media to damage his chances of re-election. “Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of the Fake News Lamestream Media,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday, repeating a line he has used before.

“They will talk about nothing else until November 4th., when the Election will be (hopefully!) over. Then the talk will be how low the death rate is, plenty of hospital rooms, & many tests of young people.”

Trump’s latest comments on coronavirus appear to have been prompted by a mocking speech delivered by Barack Obama in Florida on Tuesday.

“What’s his closing argument? That people are too focused on covid. He said this at one of his rallies: ‘Covid, covid, covid,’ he’s complaining,” the former president said, referring to Trump’s regular gripes about the media’s focus on the coronavirus. “He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage.”

Biden was due to outline his own approach to coronavirus and broader healthcare on Wednesday.

Addressing the pandemic in a speech, Biden aimed for a far more realistic tone. “Even if I win, it’s going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic,” he said in Wilmington, Delaware, where he lives. “I’m not running on the false promises of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch. But I do promise this: we will start on day one doing the right things.”

In the last week of the campaign, the dynamics of the electoral college – which Trump won in 2016 despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton – appeared to be defining the campaigning schedules of the two candidates.

With Trump focusing on midwestern states he needs to hold to stay in office, Biden was planning to visit Iowa later in the week – a state Trump carried by 10 points in 2016.

“We’re definitely on offense, but we are also visiting the states where the president did win last time,” Trump re-election campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said on a conference call with reporters.

For Biden in particular, and Democrats in general, the allocation of precious hours for visits by the candidate in the last days of the campaign have become a source of anxiety, amid memories of missteps by Hillary Clinton, who ignored Wisconsin and saw it tip narrowly to Trump.

Of particular concern has been polling in Pennsylvania, where Biden’s current lead in a state that is key for both candidates is just 5.1 points – leading some to suggest that if polling errors seen in 2016 were replicated, the state might be close to a tie

Commenting on the tightening Pennsylvania race, Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight polling website underlined its importance.

“It is close to being a must-win for Trump, who has only a 2% chance of winning the electoral college if he loses Pennsylvania. Biden, however, has a bit more margin for error.”