Trump attacks kidnap plot victim Gretchen Whitmer as campaign heads to Wisconsin and Michigan
Both states break records for coronavirus cases as nation enters third ‘surge’
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump launched a fresh attack on governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer just weeks after she was the victim of a right-wing militia kidnap plot.
Earlier Mr Trump lashed out at a Republican senator who warned that the president will inspire a GOP “blood bath” on Election Day.
He said that the president “regularly sells out our allies under his leadership” while he “spends like a drunken sailor."
“He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors," Senator Sasse said. "He's flirted with white supremacists."
Mr Trump hit back in a pair of tweets comparing “little” Sasse to Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, two other GOP senators who feuded with the president.
He said: “Both Senators became totally unelectable, couldn’t come even close to winning their primaries, and decided to drop out of politics and gracefully “RETIRE”. @SenSasse could be next, or perhaps the Republicans should find a new and more viable candidate?”
Meanwhile, with less than three weeks so Election Day, the president said he “won’t feel so good” if he loses to Joe Biden, as more than 25 million voters have already cast their ballots.
“Could you imagine if I lose?” he told rallygoers on 16 October. “I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”
The president headed to rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan on Saturday, despite both states reporting their largest single-day case counts since the onset of the public health crisis.
As the nation surpasses 8 million infections and is climbing its way into a third “surge" of cases and hospitalisations, Michigan reported its second consecutive day of more than 2,000 confirmed cases on Friday.
Wisconsin health officials reported three consecutive days with more than 3,000 cases. On Friday, the state recorded more than 4,000.
Nearly 70,000 coronavirus infections were reported in the US on Friday, marking the nation’s single highest confirmed daily case count since July.
Hello, and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the US election as we hurtle towards the big day
Trump heads for Michigan and Wisconsin
Mr Trump is set for another day on the campaign trail on Saturday, with rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin planned.
Big themes on the agenda too – according to his events schedule, his Michigan rally will focus on “supporting the American way of life”, while he’ll be talking about “supporting law enforcement” in Wisconsin.
NYT polling: Biden leads in Michigan and Wisconsin
Here’s the NYT’s round-up of how states are polling. This is what Michigan and Wisconsin are looking like ahead of this weekend’s rallies:
White House orders Tennessee to implement mask rules
The White House told Tennessee earlier this week that "a statewide mask mandate must be implemented" to contain its Covid-19 outbreak.
Republican Governor Bill Lee has let counties decide whether to require masks in public.
The president has repeatedly said he isn’t in favour of mask requirements – going against the CDC’s public health guidance.
Judges appointed by Republicans ruled to restrict voting access 80 per of the time, study shows
Republican-appointed federal judges and Supreme Court justices ruled in favour of hindering voting access 80 per cent of the time in 2020, a study by a group that favours expanding the Supreme Court has found.
This compares to 37 per cent of Democratic appointees, the Anti-Democracy Scorecard analysis showed.
The group looked at all cases this year that judges and justices voted on that concerned “seeking freedom to vote, ballot access, or lowered signature requirements”.
Wisconsin rally to go ahead despite coronavirus task force briefing saying residents must avoid crowds
The president will hold a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday, despite his own coronavirus task force warning the state that residents must avoid “crowds in public and social gatherings in private” or cause “preventable deaths”.
The briefing was issued in a weekly report that is sent to governors – but not published publicly, the Centre for Public Integrity reported earlier this week.
The latest report ranks Wisconsin fourth in the US for new cases per capita and seventh for test positivity.
Here are some photos from Friday’s Trump rally in Macon, Georgia that have come in on the wires:
The president is gearing up for more rallies this weekend, including in Wisconsin, where cases are surging, despite it emerging that Minnesota health officials have traced two dozen cases to Trump events in the last month.
Authorities in the state have also linked one positive coronavirus case to an event in Duluth on 16 September which was held in support of the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.
Trump loses to Biden in town hall TV ratings war despite being shown on two more networks
Donald Trump has lost his latest TV ratings war with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who amassed around 600,000 more viewers than the US president during their competing town halls earlier this week.
The lagging ratings will come as a blow to Mr Trump, who has long obsessed over his own popularity and has regularly weaponised the supposedly poor TV ratings of other media figures to mock them on social media.
Trump loses to Biden in town hall TV ratings war despite being shown on two more networks
Defeat will likely enrage US president who has long obsessed over media popularity
Only one in two voters confident that election result will be announced promptly
As Americans look toward 3 November, only half of voters are at least “somewhat confident” they will know who won the election within a day or two of polls closing, according to research by a Washington think tank.
The analysis by Pew Research Centre also found that more than half of Trump voters (53 per cent) are “very confident” that in-person voting won’t spread the coronavirus, while only 17 per cent of the former vice president’s supporters say the same.
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