US President Donald Trump promised supporters in Florida on Friday that the coronavirus pandemic would end soon and accused Democratic rival Joe Biden of overstating the health crisis to scare Americans into voting for him, Reuters reports.
The pandemic, which has killed more than 224,000 people in the United States and cost millions more their jobs, has become the dominant issue of the campaign, with Trump on the defensive over his administration’s handling of the crisis.
Biden earlier in the day said Trump had given up on containing the virus and promised if he wins the Nov. 3 election he will ask Congress to pass a comprehensive COVID-19 bill that he would sign within the first 10 days of taking office, Reuters says.
“He’s quit on America. He just wants us to grow numb,” Biden said during a speech in his home city of Wilmington, Delaware. “I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m going to shut down the virus.”
During two rallies in the battleground state of Florida, Trump mocked Biden for saying in Thursday night’s presidential debate that the United States was entering a “dark winter.”
He said the former vice president and his Democratic allies were trying to scare people by overstating the virus threat.
“We’re going to quickly end this pandemic,” Trump, who has played down the threat since it started, said in The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in central Florida.
According to Reuters, later, Trump told a big crowd in Pensacola that the election was a choice “between a boom and a lockdown.”
Anano Nikoladze
News Author