Trump news – live: Rudy Giuliani caught up in anti-MAGA protests, as president warns of 'crooked dishonest' election
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Donald Trump has made an unscheduled campaign stop in Maine, flying in from neighbouring New Hampshire to greet his supporters at an apple orchard.
Maine is a surprising stop for the president, as his rival Joe Biden is leading in the state by a 14 point margin, suggesting the president has little hope of swinging it.
He does love a crowd, though, and earlier on Sunday arrived to a cheering mass of “thousands” in New Hampshire.
Speaking about the impending election, which is just nine days away, Mr Trump said it was “time to end the fight” with Mr Biden and that “our country will never be a socialist one”.
In his hometown of New York pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions scuffled, with Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor and now Mr Trump lawyer, caught in the midst as his car drove through the melee.
Trump claims another president would have taken years for vaccines
“If this was another administration you wouldn’t have vaccines for three years,” boasted Mr Trump.
Trump says he could raise $900m if he wanted
“I could call up every guy on Wall Street and say I needed $10m or $20m right now,” said Mr Trump.
“I would have those donors and they would be talking about Trump raising $900m, I could do that so easy."
Carry on North Carolina: Mike Pence continues campaigning despite close contact with Covid
Donald Trump is officially done for the day, but Mike Pence, the vice president, is still planning on travelling to North Carolina tonight for a rally.
That is despite five of his team testing positive for coronavirus in the past few days - among them chief of staff Marc Short and senior political advisor Marty Obst.
Mr Pence will continue campaigning, his office said, despite being in close contact with Short, because he is deemed an essential worker.
When two people from Kamala Harris’ team tested positive, she cancelled her travel plans for four days until 18 October — despite not being in close contact with the infected individuals.
On Sunday morning Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, confirmed that he had tried to keep the information about Pence’s team quiet, with only nine days to go until the election.
“Sharing personal information is not something that we should do, not something that we do actually do — unless it’s the vice president or the president or someone that’s very close to them where there’s people in harm’s way,” he told CNN.
Barack Obama points out Biden’s viral tweet
One year ago today, Joe Biden tweeted a warning that a pandemic could cause chaos.
He was tweeting in response to a Washington Post story that found how ill-prepared the US was for a pandemic.
Of course, this was three months before Covid-19 arrived in the country, and six months before the worst hit.
Biden tweeted:
“We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores. ”
On Sunday, one year on, Obama praised his former vice president’s foresight.
Donald Trump makes an unnanounced campaign stop in Maine
What’s the Maine event?
Good question.
The president wasn’t supposed to be coming to Maine today. It has only four electoral college votes (compared to Pennsylvania’s 20, New York’s 29 and Texas’s 38). And it’s not considered a classic swing state - Joe Biden has a hefty 14 point lead, according to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis.
Maine has voted Democratic in the last seven elections, although the 2016 race was much closer than in recent elections. Hillary Clinton won the state by just 2.9 per cent over Donald Trump.
Yet what is interesting is that Maine is one of only two states — along with Nebraska — that do not use a winner-take-all electoral vote allocation. In Maine, the winner of the popular vote gets two electoral votes, while one is assigned to the winner of each of Maine’s two congressional districts.
If the race with Biden is close, it could mean Trump’s visit was worthwhile.
He’s visiting an orchard in Levant, a town of 2,800 people 10 miles out of Bangor.
The CEO of Treworgy Family Orchards said he only found out about the event last night, and said he would have said no if the Trump campaign wanted to hold a large rally there.
But, he told Bangor Daily News’ political editor: “If a sitting president wants to come buy some apples, we can do that.”
Rudy Giuliani caught up in NYC protests
The former mayor of New York — now Trump’s lawyer — was being driven through the city when his car was surrounded by anti-Trump protesters.
“F*** you, Rudy!” one yelled.
Graeme Massie writes:
Rudy Giuliani caught up in anti-Trump protests in Manhattan
Police forced to keep apart opponents during competing rallies
Vladimir Putin weighs in
The Russian president told state television on Sunday that he saw nothing criminal in Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine, in what could be seen as a bid to curry favour with a potential new president.
“Yes, in Ukraine he (Hunter Biden) had or maybe still has a business, I don’t know. It doesn’t concern us. It concerns the Americans and the Ukrainians,” said Putin.
“But well yes he had at least one company, which he practically headed up, and judging from everything he made good money. I don’t see anything criminal about this, at least we don’t know anything about this (being criminal).”
He noted, however, Biden’s “sharp anti-Russian rhetoric” - but concluded that he would work with any US president.
Worth remembering that Biden, during a 2011 visit to the Kremlin, looked into Putin’s eyes and told him: “I don’t think you have a soul.”
Putin apparently replied: “I see we understand each other perfectly.”
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