Trump Warns Communism May Be on November Ballot: Campaign Update
Biden Lead Among Latinos Smaller Than Clinton’s: Campaign Update
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said the U.S. is at risk of communism in November. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden lamented the loss of life as the U.S. Covid-19 death toll reached 200,000. And a conservative group’s new ad takes a different position on filling a Supreme Court seat than in 2016.
There are 43 days until the election.
Other Developments:
Trump Says U.S. Is Threatened by Communism in November
Trump frequently says the U.S. is at risk of sliding into socialism if the Democrats win the election. But he ratcheted up the threat level Monday, saying the country would face the peril of communism under a Biden presidency.
“The choice in November is going to be very simple,” Trump said at a rally in Dayton, Ohio. “There’s never been a time where there’s such a difference. One is probably communism, I don’t know. They keep saying socialism, I think they’ve gone over that one. That one’s passed already.”
Trump has often charged that the Democratic Party is in the grip of “radicals” such as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described democratic socialist, and he has accused New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of being part of a “bunch of communists.” But his suggestion that the U.S. is in danger of becoming a communist country could indicate a more extreme line of attack against Biden.
The former vice president, Trump said, is “too scared to stand up to the radical left of his own party” and would bring about a “depression” if elected. -- Mario Parker and Jordan Fabian
Biden Laments Lost Lives As Covid Toll Reaches 200,000 (4:16 p.m.)
Biden lamented the rising death toll from Covid-19, warning Americans not to become numb to the tragedy as the tally reached 200,000 in the United States.
Biden laid the blame for the growing number at Trump’s feet, saying he failed to adequately protect the country.
“Due to Donald Trump’s lies and incompetence in the past six months have seen one of the gravest losses of American life in history,” Biden said at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. “But sadly, it’s not over. As awful as the past 180 days have been, the next 90 days could be twice as bad.”
Biden, who always wears a mask in public but usually removes it for speeches, kept in on Monday due to an indoor mask mandate in Wisconsin.
Monday marked Biden’s second trip to Wisconsin during the general election season, after one earlier this month to Kenosha, where he addressed racial divides in the aftermath of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, but Biden has led in recent polls of likely voters of the state. An ABC News/Washington Post poll last week found him leading Trump 52% to 46% while another, from CNN, had him up 52% to 42%. -- Jennifer Epstein
Conservative Group Flips Position on Filling Supreme Court Seats (2:31 p.m.)
The Judicial Crisis Network will spend $2.2 million on an ad arguing that Trump’s Supreme Court pick should be swiftly confirmed, the opposite position from the one it took when there was a court opening in 2016.
The first ad from the conservative legal group points out that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor were confirmed in bipartisan votes within weeks of their nomination.
“In eight out of ten vacancies like this, the nominee was confirmed,” the ad says, an oblique reference to nominations made when the president and the Senate majority are from the same party.
The conservative group, which spent heavily to promote the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, had a slightly different message when lobbying against the confirmation of Barack Obama-nominated judge Merrick Garland in 2016.
In a press release touting its work in 2016, the group said its ads were designed to “let the people decide by their votes in November for president who should be the next Supreme Court Justice.”
“The American people deserve to have a voice in this lifetime appointment,” the release quoted chief counsel Carrie Severino saying at the time.
Trump Gets Help From Netanyahu in TV Ad (1:49 p.m.)
The Trump campaign is using close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to win over Jewish voters.
In an ad narrowly targeted at southern Florida, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., the campaign cites the president’s recent deal with Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and features Netanyahu speaking at the White House.
“I am grateful to you, President Trump, for your decisive leadership,” Netanyahu says.
Trump has long sought to use Israel to woo Jewish voters. He complained on a pre-Rosh Hashanah phone call with U.S. Jewish leaders that he should be doing better in polls because of his support for Israel, which he referred to as “your country.”
A recent poll of Jewish voters found two-thirds support Biden and 30% backed Trump, a slight improvement for the president compared to 2016 exit polls. Israel ranked last among issues Jewish voters were concerned about in the poll, lower than the economy, health care, the coronavirus and anti-Semitism.
Trump Campaign Goes Hard on Biden Using Teleprompters (11:39 a.m.)
The Trump campaign is sticking to the script and slamming Biden’s use of a Teleprompter.
In recent weeks, the president has argued that Biden relies too heavily on a teleprompter, echoing a criticism he leveled against Barack Obama, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, among others, despite regularly using one himself.
In a video posted Sunday, the campaign goes one step further, using Fox News footage and slow-motion close-ups to make the claim that Biden has used a teleprompter when answering questions.
Trump has long bashed Teleprompters, arguing that politicians like Clinton “just can’t read speeches.” In July, he falsely claimed that Biden read the answers to reporters’ questions at a press conference from a Teleprompter, which was turned off at the time.
At a campaign rally recently in Wisconsin, Trump mocked Biden for using a Teleprompter even as his own was clearly visible to the audience.
Poll Shows Americans Don’t Trust Trump on Vaccine (11:24 a.m.)
A new poll about the coronavirus contains some bad news for Trump. After months of touting unproven treatments for the virus, Americans just don’t trust his word on the vaccine.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday found only 9% said they had a great deal of confidence in a Trump-backed vaccine, and 18% said they had some confidence.
Trump may be a victim of his own promises. He has repeatedly said a vaccine will be coming soon, predicting that it might even be available before Election Day, contradicting public health experts who say it will take longer. On Friday, he said at a White House press briefing that there would be enough for every American by April, several months earlier than public health experts say is likely.
The survey of 528 adults nationwide was conducted Sept. 18-19. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 points.
Biden Intensifies the Fight for Iowa, Georgia (10:13 a.m.)
The Biden campaign says it’s buying ad time in Iowa and launching a new ad in Georgia in hopes of picking up two states Trump won in 2016.
Biden is entering Iowa with television ads ahead of schedule, having reserved $2.1 million in ads beginning in October.
The campaign did not disclose the size of its September ad buy, but said it would run previously released one-minute ads featuring Biden speaking about his background, the coronavirus, and rioting in U.S. cities. Trump won Iowa in 2016 by 9.5 percentage points, but a Des Moines Register poll in June had him leading by just 1 point.
In Georgia, Biden is releasing new ads in his “Shop Talk” campaign, featuring Black men talking about their experiences in a barber shop. Trump won Georgia by 5.2 points in 2016 but now leads by 1.3 points in the RealClearPolitics average. -- Gregory Korte
Trump Nods to Ginsburg as an Ally -- One Time: Campaign Update (9:46 a.m.)
Trump touted Ginsburg, the liberal feminist icon and the only Supreme Court justice ever to openly criticize him, as a one-time ally.
In a phone interview with “Fox and Friends,” Trump said she was a “legend” even though he disagreed with her.
“She actually voted for me in a very important case, and I was shocked if you want to know the truth because we lost a couple of conservative votes and she made it possible for this to be approved,” he said.
Trump did not specify which case that was, but there are very few in which Ginsburg sided with the Trump administration, as the court’s liberal minority tends to vote together more frequently than its conservatives.
The most recent possible decision was a 2019 case in which she sided with the court’s conservatives to find that a criminal defendant could be sentenced for violating the terms of his supervision, while Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the court’s liberals.
Biden’s Lead Among Latinos Smaller Than Clinton’s (7:04 a.m.)
Biden is winning Latino voters handily, but he’s still falling short of Clinton’s 2016 numbers.
In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll released Sunday, 62% of Latino voters nationwide backed Biden and 26% backed Trump. Nine percent were unsure.
Exit polls showed Clinton won 66% of Latino voters in 2016, while Trump won 28%, roughly comparable with prior Republican nominees.
Biden has shown softer support among Latinos, a particularly crucial demographic in the battleground states of Arizona and Florida. Both the Trump and the Biden campaigns have done outreach to the Hispanic community through campaign events in recent weeks.
The survey of 300 registered Latino voters across the country was conducted Sept. 13-16. The margin of error is plus-or-minus 5.7 percentage points.
Biden Campaign Video Uses Woodward Interview on Coronavirus
The Biden campaign is using Woodward’s taped interviews with the president in its latest web video about the coronavirus pandemic.
In a video posted on social media Sunday, six medical professionals including an emergency room doctor and a nurse respond to Trump’s comments about the pandemic in his interviews with the journalist and author and in his public remarks.
Filmed like the reaction videos popular online, it shows them grimacing, shaking their heads and putting their hands over their mouths as Trump is shown comparing the virus to a “strenuous flu,” predicting the virus will disappear by April, claiming that children are “almost immune” to the disease and telling Woodward that he wanted to play down the pandemic.
“By underplaying how serious the virus was, people died,” says an emergency medicine doctor. “People that I know died, and this one is not OK.”
The video also shows a White House spokeswoman saying that Trump has “never lied to the American public” about the coronavirus.
“Unless we’ve come up with a new definition for lies, I think he lied,” says a frontline worker.
Vote-by-Mail Begins in Florida This Week
Voters will begin casting ballots this week in another battleground state, as mail-in ballots are sent out Thursday in Florida.
The Sunshine State is one of five that will send out ballots 40 days before the election, along with Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi and North Dakota. Missouri will send out ballots Tuesday.
Voting is already underway in North Carolina and Michigan, and a court ruling last week paved the way for Pennsylvania to send ballots.
The impact of early voting could be significant this year, as fears of the coronavirus have driven an unprecedented surge in interest in vote-by-mail, while Trump’s attacks on it have created a partisan divide for the first time.
In North Carolina, where mail-in ballots were sent more than two weeks ago, more than 120,000 ballots have already been returned and accepted, with 55% coming from Democrats, 29% from independents and just 16% from Republicans, according to the Old North State politics site.
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