Trump holds rallies in Arizona despite surge in US coronavirus cases

REUTERS: US President Donald Trump continued to hold huge rallies with only a week left in the US election, despite criticism that he was putting his re-election campaign before his supporters’ health.

The pandemic that has upended life across the United States this year, killing more than 227,000 people and causing millions of job losses, is roaring back in the days leading up to Tuesday’s contest between Republican Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Biden holds a comfortable lead in national polls, which show a public increasingly dismayed by Trump’s handling of the largest public health crisis in U.S. living memory. Polls in battleground states that will likely decide the election are tighter than the national surveys.

At an outdoor rally in Goodyear, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, Trump continued to argue against taking stricter measures against the resurgent virus.

“Biden and the Democrat socialists will delay the vaccine, prolong the pandemic, shutter your schools and shut down our country,” Trump told the attendees, who were tightly packed together with just some wearing masks. “And your state is open right? Your state is nice and open.”

A number of drugmakers are competing to bring a coronavirus vaccine to market, but one is not expected to be ready before next week’s election.

A Trump adviser said the rallies were “priceless” given Biden’s dominance on the ad airwaves.

“These rallies generate significant free media coverage that helps offset whatever money advantage Biden has. Fox News basically runs the whole rallies. It’s a great asset,” the adviser said.

Biden raised about $130 million during the Oct. 1-14 period, about three times the roughly $44 million raised by Trump’s campaign, according to disclosures filed last Thursday with the Federal Election Commission.

The adviser said Trump was typically holding rallies in portions of the country where masks are worn less and people are less concerned about the ill effects of COVID-19.

“If you overlay the rallies on a map, you would see they typically run along the same lines of the divide over COVID. So, really, there’s only upside,” the adviser said.

Each of Trump’s rallies in recent days has drawn several thousand people.