(Doral) Donald Trump postponed at the last minute a rally originally planned for Saturday, officially because of a storm, as he sought to give a boost to his campaign for a second term against a Joe Biden getting better and better in the polls.
Posted on 10 July 2020 at 10 h 49 Updated to 13 h 07
Jerome CARTILLIER
France Media Agency
The president again blamed China for the pandemic: “Relations with China have been badly damaged,” he told reporters on his plane. Beijing “could have stopped” the virus but “did not do it.”
The US President's spokeswoman announced on Friday that the planned rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire has been postponed “by a week or two”, officially due to the threat posed by tropical storm Fay.
This rally caused concern, because New Hampshire is one of the rare regions of the country where the COVID pandemic – 13 is in decline. Even the state’s Republican governor said he wouldn’t be there as a health precaution, and the Trump team seemed to have given up on a heavy crowd.
It is therefore not this weekend that Donald Trump will rebound after the disappointment of the Tulsa rally in Oklahoma on 19 June, who had gathered 6200 people in a half-empty room, and who was followed by a outbreak of new COVID cases – 19 two weeks later.
“Be careful, and we will be there soon!” Tweeted Donald Trump.
The Republican leader spent the day on Friday in Miami, Florida, which is one of the current hot spots of the COVID epidemic – 13, but the coronavirus was not on the agenda for his travels.
He visited the military command for South America, then participated in a round table on “support for the Venezuelan people” in a church. When he arrived at the airport, at the soldiers' house, all the officials wore masks.
“We are still fighting it (the virus), and we will get very good results,” he said.
Bad polls
The American president persists in saying, falsely, that the outbreak of the cases is only due to better screening. In the past month, the number of tests performed daily has increased by 33%, but the number of cases detected by 167%, according to COVID data – 19 Tracking Project. In Texas, Florida, Arizona and California, the gap is even greater.
The number of deaths due to COVID – 19, at national level, which had fallen since the peaks of April in favor of the improvement of the situation in New York, started to rise again recently, the numerous contaminations of the month of June gradually transforming into deaths. In recent days, Texas and Florida have each reported their record number of deaths since the start of the pandemic.
The President's re-election campaign suffers.
Two-thirds of Americans now disapprove of Donald Trump's handling of the pandemic, according to an ABC poll published on Friday, compared with half in April. Polls for the November 3 election give opponent Democrat Joe Biden an average of nine points.
“In the real polls, we are in a very good position,” said Donald Trump on Friday.
Fauci non grata
“As a country, when we compare ourselves to other countries, I don't think we can say that we did well. This just isn't the case, “said Anthony Fauci, the US government's top infectious disease expert, of the current pandemic management at the FiveThirtyEight site on Thursday.
He was the one who warned last week when the country was recording 40 00 0 daily cases, as the bar of 100 00 0 per day could be reached; Thursday's balance sheet was 65 00 0.
Member of the White House cell on the coronavirus, he saw Donald Trump in the spring every day, and he was always careful never to criticize the leader, while being the only member of the cell to sound the alarm signal on the restart of the epidemic in June. A distance has since settled.
In an interview with Financial Times , the immunologist said he hadn't seen Donald Trump since June 2, and that he hadn't briefed him for at least two months.
