2020 Campaign - October
Trump cannot, would not accept the result if he loses. The most problematic scenarios is if Trump wins on that day but [if the result is later] kind of reversed when you count the mail-in votes, then that cannot be accepted by President Trump.
Donald Trump’s positive coronavirus test 02 October 2020 undermined his repeated claims that the US is "rounding the turn" in its handling of the pandemic, with just one month to go before the November 3 election. Trump is 74 years old, putting him at higher risk of serious complications from the virus. His physician has said the president is "well" and will continue to perform his duties "without disruption". News of the infection of the most powerful man in the world with the most notorious disease has drawn instant reactions of shock, sympathy, undisguised glee and, of course, the ever-present outrage.
Donald Trump went on a rampage against vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) in a nearly hourlong phone interview with Fox Business on the morning of 08 October 2020, calling the senator a “communist” and a “monster.” Trump ? who has been releasing bizarre videos in recent days and pitching an experimental drug from Regeneron that hasn’t completed testing in clinical trials ? went on to argue that Joe Biden was “not mentally capable of being president” and wouldn’t last two months on the job. . Look, I sit next to Joe and I looked at Joe. Joe's not lasting two months as president. That's my opinion. He's not going to be lasting two months," Trump said.
Trump then called Harris a “monster” twice. "She's a communist. She's not a socialist. She's well beyond a socialist. Take a look at her views," Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. "She wants to open up the borders to allow killers and murderers and rapists to pour into our country." The president also declared himself a “perfect physical specimen” and that he had been cured of COVID-19.
Donald Trump will feature in a televised town hall on NBC News, the network said, setting up a direct scheduling clash with rival Joe Biden who had already planned his own version. The two were originally meant to have been meeting for their second debate. Instead, they will be simultaneously, but separately, talking to voters in TV studios -- NBC for Trump and ABC for Biden.
President Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail 13 October 2020 a week after being discharged from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He was campaigning in part by portraying Biden as weak and lacking stamina, and therefore must not appear to be weakened by the coronavirus. During a Florida rally, Trump stressed that he felt "powerful" and was no longer concerned about the possibility of contracting COVID-19 since he is now "immune" to the virus. "I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women. Everyone. I’ll just give you a big fat kiss", Trump told his cheering supporters. The US president is campaigning in part by portraying Biden as weak and lacking stamina, and therefore must not appear to be weakened by the coronavirus.
Trump delivered a familiar warning at his rally on 14 October 2020, telling supporters that Biden and his allies would turn America into a socialist state if given the chance. “Biden has made a corrupt bargain in exchange for his party’s nomination,” Trump said. “He has handed control to the socialists and Marxists and left-wing extremists like his vice-presidential candidate.” In an address to several civic economic clubs from the Rose Garden, Trump called the election “a choice between a socialist nightmare and the American dream.” The socialist label did not carry as much negative weight as Trump assumed. In the fall of 2018, as midterm elections approached, Trump’s White House Council of Economic Advisers produced a 72-page report warning of the dangers of socialist policies.
Education was a dividing line among White voters: College-educated White voters favor Biden by 21 percentage points, while those without a college degree favor Trump by a similar margin. As in 2016, those with a college degree or more are more likely to support the Democratic candidate over Trump. Today, those with no college degree are slightly more divided: 47% say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, while 46% say they would vote for Biden.
Trump was still trailing his Democratic rival in nationwide surveys. Last week, the "FiveThirtyEight" poll aggregator gave Trump a 14% chance of winning the vote versus an 86% chance for Biden, which triggered backlash from the president, who tweeted that the pollster had "got it so wrong". Four years ago, the same site gave Hillary Clinton a 71.4% chance of coming out on top, but missed the target.
Trump wants Biden to explain unverified reports in the New York Post that Biden’s son, Hunter, profited from lucrative deals in Ukraine through his father’s connections handling U.S. foreign policy decisions in Ukraine when the older Biden was vice president under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. Trump, on the campaign trail in recent days, has described the Bidens as “an organized crime family,” assailing Hunter Biden for his business dealings in Ukraine, including a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, and in China.
Televangelist Pat Robertson said on 20 October 2020 that God told him President Trump will win, and more than five years later an asteroid will hit Earth and “maybe” bring “the end.” Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network told “The 700 Club.”, said “First of all, I want to say without question, Trump is going to win the election." He added “That doesn't mean you sit home and don’t vote. That means you get out and do everything you can to work, but he’s going to win. That’s, I think, a given.” The televangelist had made similar predictions in the past, saying in 1976 the world would end in 1982. His 1990 book “The New Millennium” anticipated the end of time on April 29, 2007.
President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wrapped up their final debate on 22 October 2020. The one-on-one in Nashville in the US state of Tennessee comes less than two weeks before the November 3 election. Plexiglass barriers were going to separate the two rivals but were removed at the last minute as both tested negative for COVID-19. The first debate between the two was dominated by interruptions. This time, both candidates' microphones were muted at certain points to prevent them from speaking over each other.
The president visibly dialed down the volume this time which, in my view, made him a much more effective debater. Joe Biden largely held up under fire, avoiding the kind of gaffes and stumbles that ould have played into Republican attempts to question his age and mental acuity. The coronavirus pandemic dominated the first part of the debate. Trump defended his handling of the crisis, while Biden criticized the president's response. Trump continued to downplay the severity of the virus and defend his early reaction restricting travel from China and promising, despite the facts, that a vaccine will be ready shortly. Biden, pointed to the death toll from the virus, repeatedly held up a mask and said he'd push common-sense advice to states to encourage mask-wearing, and social distancing.
With just two weeks until the US presidential election, polls by political website Real Clear Politics show 51.1% of voters are in favor of Democratic nominee Joe Biden, while President Donald Trump trails by 8.6 points at 42.5%. Pre-election polls in the 2016 US presidential election also had Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the lead -- but it was Trump who won. But pollsters have learned from their mistakes and have adjusted their methods to improve accuracy ahead of the 2020 election.
"Shy Trump voters" -- voters who supported Trump without publicly revealing their preferences, are characterized by what is known as Social Desirability Bias. This leads them to give answers to polls they believe are socially acceptable, even if they diverge from their own opinions. There will be more Shy Trump voters this year: They don't want to be judged, and the number of those people has probably very much increased.
Undecided voters distorted polls more than the Shy Trump voters. According to a 2016 National Election Pool survey, up to 13% of voters were undecided until right before election day. That represents an 8-point increase compared to the previous election in 2012. Undecided voters in Wisconsin broke for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by 59 percent to 30 percent. This is unlikely to happen again in 2020. There were fewer undecided voters in 2020 than there were in 2016 - 2 percent or 5 percent.
Jared Kushner said 26 October 2020 the president wanted to help Black people succeed but that they have to want to be successful for the policies to work. “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful,” Kushner said on “Fox & Friends”. He said Black people are mostly Democrats, but are starting to see that Trump’s policies can help them solve problems they have complained about for years. Kushner also criticized people who raised their voices after the death of George Floyd, the Black man who died in police custody. “You saw a lot of people who were just virtue signaling - they go on Instagram and cry, or they would, you know, put a slogan on their jersey or write something on a basketball court,” Kushner said. “Quite frankly, that was doing more to polarize the country than it was to bring people forward. You solve problems with solutions.”
Trump’s path to victory in the US presidential election narrowed as Biden opened a lead in key Midwest states and forced Trump to play defense in Republican strongholds once thought safe. Trump needed 270 votes in the Electoral College to win re-election and with less than two weeks to go until November 3 he can only count on 164 votes from reliably Republican states including Texas, which was tight. Trump must win Florida, Ohio and North Carolina – states that polls and analysts said were toss-ups. And he needed a combination of the Midwest states that gave him the presidency in 2016 – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – where Biden held an advantage.
Wall Street has not been shy in its support of political parties. The election campaign donations of the financial elite have seldom been as high as this year. For the first time in a decade, banks, investment firms and the like have dug deeper into their pockets for the Democrats than for the Republicans. This is remarkable because the financial sector is considered to be the largest financier of political campaigns overall. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), financial companies have donated $265 million to the Democrats since the beginning of the year — almost $100 million more than to the Republicans.
"Traditionally, the financial sector is a fairly reliable source of funds for Republicans," said Sarah Bryner, director of research and strategy at CRP. "But this cycle, the trend has flipped." One reason the Democrats are currently enjoying so much support from the financial sector may be Biden himself. From the beginning of his political career until 2009, the now 77-year-old represented the state of Delaware in the Senate. He made a name for himself as a lobbyist for financial institutions and credit card companies. Delaware is home to many major Wall Street companies, so he has relationships already with these people and they trust him.
On 30 October 2020 Trump tweeted "If Sleepy Joe Biden is actually elected President, the 4 Justices (plus1) that helped make such a ridiculous win possible would be relegated to sitting on not only a heavily PACKED COURT, but probably a REVOLVING COURT as well. At least the many new Justices will be Radical Left!" Within this word-salad, Trump was saying the only way that Biden could be “actually elected President,” is if five Supreme Court justice were to allow that to happen. This is the clearest indication that Trump expects to take the results of the general election to the courts, regardless of the outcome. It also put in stark relief the rush to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll in battleground states, 20 percent more respondents in Wisconsin say they trust Biden more than Trump on handling the pandemic. In Michigan, the gap was 14 points.National polls typically show Biden with a lead of 7 to 8 percentage points lead over Trump,?but with about half that margin in key battleground states that are likely to determine the outcome in the Electoral College. According to an average of major polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, Trump trailed Biden in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin while the two candidates were virtually tied in Florida and North Carolina. Voting experts said voter turnout could be the highest percentage of the electorate since 1908, when 65% of the country's eligible voters cast ballots.
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