Trump Suggests Biden Had Plastic Surgery: Campaign Update
Young Biden Voters May Turn Out at 2008 Levels: Campaign Update
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump suggested Joe Biden might have had plastic surgery on his face. Biden received the endorsement of Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Republican senator and presidential candidate John McCain. And the Commission on Presidential Debates released the list of topics for the face-off between Biden and Trump. And remote-learning moms may be the newest target demographic.
There are 42 days until the election.
Other Developments:
Trump Suggests Biden Had Plastic Surgery
Trump taunted Biden for wearing a mask, and suggested without evidence that the Democratic nominee had plastic surgery on his face.
At a rally at Pittsburgh International Airport, Trump predicted that Biden would come on stage at their debate next week wearing a mask. “He’ll come in with a mask,” Trump said. “The question is, will he leave it on during the debate?”
Biden “feels good about the mask,” Trump added, before asking “I mean, honestly, what the hell did he spend all that money on the plastic surgery if he’s going to cover it up with a mask?”
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While Biden has insisted on wearing masks, which are required for participants at his events, Trump spoke Tuesday to a closely packed crowd, with very few people wearing them.
The president has worn a mask in public only a handful of times. His rallies routinely flout local rules and his own administration’s guidelines around masks and limiting the size of gatherings.
At a rally on Monday, Trump played down the danger from the coronavirus, which has killed more than 200,000 people in the U.S., claiming, incorrectly, that Covid-19 affects “virtually nobody” under the age of 18. -- Mario Parker and Josh Wingrove
Cindy McCain Endorses Biden (6:50 p.m.)
Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Republican senator from Arizona and 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain, endorse Biden on Tuesday.
“My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost. There’s only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is @JoeBiden,” McCain wrote on Twitter.
At a fundraiser earlier, Biden let slip that he was getting her formal backing, mentioning that a Zoom session with her was the next item on his schedule. He said she was motivated by Trump’s reported comments referring to members of the military as “losers” and “suckers.”
He added that Cindy McCain was acting because of Trump’s disparaging remarks about veterans like his late son, Beau, John McCain, “and others who were heroes, who served their country. You know, he said they were losers, suckers, suckers.”
Cindy McCain appeared in a video during the Democratic National Convention that highlighted her husband’s relationship with Biden but did not formally support him then. Other prominent Republicans, including former Ohio Governor John Kasich, have also endorsed Biden. -- Jennifer Epstein
Commission Unveils Topics for First Presidential Debate (2:33 p.m.)
Even though Trump’s campaign has suggested the president probably won’t need any particular preparation for his debate against Biden next week, he now know what topics to bone up on if he wants to.
The Commission on Presidential Debates announced Tuesday that Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who is moderating the forum, will start off with a comparison of the Trump and Biden records.
The debate will also cover the Supreme Court, the coronavirus, the economy and racial issues and the violence in U.S. cities, the commission said. It will end with a discussion of the integrity of the election itself. The topics will be divided into 15-minute segments, but are subject to change because of news developments.
The first debate takes place at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on Sept. 29 at Case Western University in Cleveland and will last 90 minutes without commercials.
The second debate will take place Oct. 15 in Miami, and the third will be in Nashville on Oct. 22. -- Gregory Korte
Remote-Learning Moms May Be the Newest Target Demographic (2:04 p.m.)
Presidential campaigns have targeted soccer moms, national security moms and even hockey moms. Now, as they battle for the votes of suburban women, they’re aiming for exasperated remote-learning moms.
The Biden campaign is reaching out to parents flustered by the coronavirus shutdowns and classes taught over Zoom in a new ad featuring a Wisconsin mother of three elementary school-aged kids that slams Trump’s response to the pandemic.
“All of a sudden, I’m a full-time mom and a full-time teacher,” says the woman, identified as Margaret, who is interrupted by one of her kids in the middle of filming the one-minute ad. “What’s been really hard for us and many families is that there’s just no end in sight.”
Trump, meantime, is appealing to the same group by arguing that schools should reopen now to allow students to get back to class and their parents back to work. At a rally Monday in Swanton, Ohio, he dismissed the risk to children, saying that “nobody under the age of 18” is affected by the coronavirus.
“Take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system,” he said. “It’s an amazing thing. By the way, open your schools. Everybody open your schools.”
Maine Voters Will Get a Second and Third Pick for President (1:26 p.m.)
While Trump has been accused of advising North Carolinians to try to vote twice, Maine voters will actually get the chance to do so.
Under a voting system approved by the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, voters in Maine will be allowed to mark their second and third choices for president, but they’ll only be added in if neither Trump nor Biden gets to 50% in the first ballot count.
Maine switched to a so-called ranked-choice voting system after two decades in which competitive three-way races led to governors without a majority of support. Ranked-choice voting is used in a number of local elections across the U.S. as well as for several awards at the Oscars.
But after years of legal and political fights over whether to implement the system in this year’s election, ranked choice may not end up making a difference in the presidential race.
A Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll released Monday showed Biden winning among Maine voters with 51% to Trump’s 39%, which would mean second-choice votes wouldn’t be counted in that race. The poll showed only 1.6% of voters planned to back a third-party candidate, so few that follow-up questions on their second and third choices weren’t statistically meaningful.
The poll of 500 likely voters was conducted Sept. 17-20. It has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Biden Racks Up 94 Nobel Endorsements, but Trump Has Himself (12:32 p.m.)
The Biden campaign has now racked up the support of a record-breaking 94 Nobel laureates, but Trump can still trumpet the only Nobel endorsement he prizes: his own nomination.
The prestigious Scandinavian award has played an outsize role in this year’s presidential election, as the Biden campaign has highlighted Nobel prize-winners who praised his respect for expertise in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics, while Trump runs ads on Facebook and TV about his own nomination for the peace prize.
Earlier this month, Biden released a letter from 81 Nobel-winning scientists, followed by a second letter Tuesday from 13 Nobel-winning economists, who said his proposals would be “vastly superior to the counterproductive economic policies of Donald Trump.”
Together, that puts Biden ahead of Hillary Clinton, who received the backing of 90 Nobel laureates; Barack Obama, who was endorsed by 76 Nobel winners in 2008 and 68 in 2012; John Kerry, who was endorsed by 48 Nobel winners; and Mitt Romney, who was backed by seven Nobel-winning economists.
Trump, who once speculated that he’ll get a Nobel Prize “for a lot of things,” frequently raises his nomination in interviews and at rallies, complaining that he is not receiving more attention for it and that Obama received the peace prize “like almost immediately” after becoming president.
Trump’s nomination for helping establish relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates came from a far-right lawmaker in the Norwegian Parliament. Under Nobel rules, any national lawmaker can make a nomination for the peace prize.
Bloomberg Raises Money to Help Florida Felons Vote (11:08 a.m.)
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised more than $16 million to help felons in Florida meet voting requirements in what could be the critical battleground state in the Nov. 3 election.
Bloomberg, who supports Biden, was part of an effort with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition to pay the outstanding court fines, restitution and other costs owed by felons in Florida, according to a Bloomberg spokesperson. Felons in Florida can have their voting rights restored under a 2018 constitutional amendment, but the legislature required them to first pay any outstanding fees, such as court costs and restitution, that many can’t afford.
Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
The aid to restore felons’ voting rights is in addition to the $100 million that Bloomberg has committed to defeat Trump in Florida, which will be spent on voter turnout and outreach to Hispanic voters. Biden holds a slim, 1.6 percentage-point advantage over Trump in Florida, according to RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.
Bloomberg, who endorsed Biden after ending his own Democratic presidential campaign in March, is focusing on Florida with its 29 electoral votes. It would be difficult for Trump to win re-election without carrying Florida. -- Mark Niquette
Massive Gender Gap Drives Close Race in Iowa (9:43 a.m.)
Biden is fighting to flip Iowa from Trump, and if he succeeds, it will be with the help of women.
In a Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll released Tuesday, 47% of likely voters in Iowa supported both Trump and Biden, a tie in a state Trump won in 2016. But beneath that is an intense gender gap, with men preferring Trump 57% to 36% and women preferring Biden 57% to 37%.
“I don’t know that there’s any race in the history of presidential polling in Iowa that shows this kind of division,” pollster J. Ann Selzer told the Des Moines Register.
The gender gap shows up in other state and national polls, but Iowa’s is one of the larger ones. Data compiled by the Center for American Women in Politics shows women backing Biden by six to 21 points in various battleground states, and 12 to 25 points in national polls.
Flush with cash from an influx of donations in August, the Biden campaign is seeking to capitalize on the close race in Iowa, running ads there and in Georgia in an attempt to broaden its electoral map.
Iowa’s six electoral votes puts it on par with Nevada, a Democratic-leaning state that Trump is trying to put into play. None of the seven maps showing a Trump win presented by the campaign earlier this month showed him losing Iowa, and in four of the scenarios, he would lose without it.
Trump Rallygoers Boo Suggestion to Wear Masks (8:13 a.m.)
The crowd at a Trump rally booed an Ohio official who suggested they wear campaign-branded masks in public.
Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, a Republican, showed off some red Trump masks on stage at a rally Monday near Dayton, saying he was “trying to make masks in America great again.”
“If you go into a grocery store where you’ve gotta wear one...,” he said.
The crowd then booed.
“Hang on, hang on, just listen up,” he said, as the booing grew louder. “All right, I get it. But if something tells you to take it off, you can at least say that you’re trying to save the country by wearing one of President Donald Trump’s.”
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are regularly wearing masks in public in polls, but the partisan gap has narrowed since this summer.
In a Pew Research Center poll in August, 92% of Democrats and people who lean Democratic said they usually wear masks in stores, compared to 76% of Republicans and those leaning Republican. That 16-point gap is smaller than the 23-point gap in the spring.
Young Voters May Turn Out at 2008 Levels for Biden (7:12 a.m.)
Just before the Democratic primary began last year, hundreds of thousands of TikTok users shared homemade videos in which members of Generation Z sang “Please Don’t Make Me Vote for Joe Biden.”
As it turns out, many of them are going to vote for Joe Biden after all.
The Harvard Youth Poll, released Monday, found that 18- to 29-year-old voters backed Biden by wider margins than they did Hillary Clinton four years ago, and they look poised to turn out in huge numbers.
The poll found 60% of young voters backed Biden while only 27% backed Trump. By comparison, only 49% supported Clinton in the same poll in 2016.
The poll showed signs of a youth turnout surge, with 63% of respondents saying they will “definitely be voting” compared to 47% four years ago. Pollsters say that indicates a level of turnout closer to the 2008 boom that helped make Biden vice president.
The survey of 1,206 18- to 29-year-olds was conducted from Aug. 28 to Sept. 9. The margin of error is plus-or-minus 3.22 percentage points.
Voter Registration Rates Dropped in Four Battleground States
The rate of new voter registrations has dropped this year in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin, as socially distant Americans have stayed away from DMVs, malls and door-to-door canvassers.
According to a study released by the Brennan Center for Justice Tuesday to mark National Voter Registration Day, the rate of new registrations each month has dropped significantly in 17 out of 21 states that made the data available to researchers.
Among the battleground states, Arizona had the biggest dropoff at 65%, followed by Florida at 26% and North Carolina at 14%. Wisconsin’s 2% drop was among the lowest in the states studied, while Michigan actually increased 23%.
Researchers say they have no idea why Michigan as well as Alaska, Idaho and Utah were doing better than in 2016.
Social-distancing due to the coronavirus has hurt traditional voter registration efforts, which depend on knocking on doors and cornering people in large gathering places like indoor malls. And while one-third of voters in 2016 registered at the Department of Motor Vehicles, many states shuttered their DMVs in the first few months of the pandemic.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.