US Election 2020: Trump, Biden press on in the final leg of campaigning

Donald Trump and Joe Biden both hit the campaign trail soon after the presidential debate. Donald Trump held rallies in Florida while Joe Biden gave a speech in Delaware. Both of them lashed out at each other with Trump downplaying the threat of coroanavirus pandemic and Joe Biden trying to corner him on the same issue questioning Trump's leadership.

Florida is an important state and has often decided who wins the presidency. Biden has a firm lead over Trump in the state. Trump held two rallies on Friday

Targeting the politically powerful seniors' vote in Florida, Trump began with a rally in the famous retirement community The Villages, where he told a large crowd that all Biden talks about is "Covid, Covid, Covid" to try and "scare people."

"We're going to quickly end this pandemic, this horrible plague," he said, underlining his consistent message that the virus is on a rapid decline, when in fact case numbers are spiralling upward again, with more than 220,000 Americans already dead.

Referring to Biden's warning of a "dark winter" ahead, Trump countered: "We're not entering a dark winter. We're entering the final turn and approaching the light at the end of the tunnel."

He then pivoted to his own scare tactics, claiming that Biden would let in hordes of illegal immigrants that he said were comprised of "criminals and rapists and even murderers."

"Joe Biden cares more about illegal aliens than he does about senior citizens," he said.

Trump finished his day with a rally in Pensacola, Florida, where he told the cheering crowd that "11 days from now, we're going to win my home state of Florida."

While he is a lifelong New Yorker, Trump changed his residency to Florida during his White House tenure and on Saturday he was to cast his own ballot in West Palm Beach.

The rest of the weekend will see Trump, 74, maintaining the frenetic pace with rallies in North Carolina and Ohio on Saturday, then New Hampshire on Sunday, before a spate of more rallies next week.

Trump said that by November 3 he'll be doing "five or six a day."

'President still doesn't have a plan'

Joe Biden, who remained relatively low-key on the campaign tral till now is ramping up his presence before the voters.

In his home state of Delaware, he gave a speech about economic recovery from the pandemic, slamming Trump's record and vowing -- as Trump has -- that he would provide a safe coronavirus vaccine to all who want it.

"We saw him refuse to take responsibility for a crisis that should have been met with real, presidential leadership," Biden said. "We saw him diminish the pain felt by so many Americans."

"We are more than eight months into the crisis and the president still doesn't have a plan," Biden claimed. 
"He's given up. He quit on you, on your family, on America. He just wants us to grow numb and resigned to the horrors."

On Saturday, Biden will travel to Pennsylvania, which like Florida is in the top tier of battleground states deciding national elections.

Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice president, will lend his Democratic star power to the campaign on Saturday with a rally in Miami.

Pivot too late?

Trump's campaign has been turned upside down by the coronavirus crisis, which a majority of voters say he has failed to handle well.

In addition to the national disaster, Trump's reelection bid has been hampered throughout by his own erratic and often bad tempered behavior.

At Thursday's final televised debate in Nashville, the president pivoted to the more cheerful, even-keeled leader that aides have long been hoping Americans will see.

Perhaps most startling was the relative civility of the debate compared to the disastrous first showdown last month when Trump continuously shouted Biden down.

This time, Trump called his Democratic opponent "Joe" and even lauded moderator Kristen Welker of NBC News, who had a mute button to keep order.

"I thought I did great," Trump said Friday. "It's two different styles. I can do different styles."

But whether this shift from the usually bruising diet of insults, grievances and conspiracy theories will be enough at this stage -- or whether it will even last the weekend -- is an open question.

Despite the sunnier image, Trump's team had gone into Thursday's debate hoping to damage Biden with a murky and dubiously sourced allegation that he profited from foreign business deals conducted by his son while he was serving in the White House.

The attack largely fizzled, however, when Biden not only parried the accusations but noted that serious questions were mounting around Trump himself, including his holding of a bank account in China and failing to publish his US tax returns.

(With AFP inputs)