Democrat Joe Biden said Tuesday he would be opposed to debating Donald Trump next week as scheduled if the US president is still sick with Covid-19, saying he would want to follow health guidelines.

“I’m looking forward to being able to debate him, but I just hope all the protocols are followed,” Biden, 77, told reporters as he returned from a speech near the Civil War battlefield site in Gettysburg.

Trump, 74, announced early Friday — two days after his first debate with Biden in Cleveland — that he had tested positive for the virus.

The men are scheduled to square off again on October 15, but Biden said: “If he still has COVID, we shouldn’t have a debate.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines say people who test positive for the virus should stay home for at least 10 days after symptoms first appear, while people who become severely ill might need to stay home for up to 20 days.

“It’s a very serious problem, so I will be guided by… what the docs say is the right thing to do,” Biden said.

Trump has given no indication he would bow out due to his health, saying in a tweet that he is “looking forward” to the next debate.

mlm/jm

© Agence France-Presse

/AFP

by Sebastian Smith with Brendan Smialowski in Gettysburg

President Donald Trump defied the Covid-19 virus, disastrous opinion polls and new economic turmoil Tuesday in a stormy return from hospitalization, while surging challenger Joe Biden appealed for Americans to unite against the “forces of darkness.”

There have been few tougher days for Trump since he came to power after his shock 2016 election win.

Still being treated with a powerful cocktail of drugs for the coronavirus after three nights in hospital, he was scrambling to get his reelection campaign back on track ahead of November 3 election day — just four weeks away.

Latest polls forecast a huge victory for Biden, with CNN giving the Democrat a national advantage of 57 percent to 41 percent among likely voters, with women voters going 66 to 32 percent in his favor.

Biden’s advance comes as Trump has been forced off the campaign trail after falling ill last Friday to the virus that has already killed some 210,000 Americans.

With what White House doctors describe as his rapid recovery, Trump is doubling down on his controversial position that Covid-19 is taken too seriously, painting himself as a fighter who took on the virus and easily won.

After telling Americans in a speech from the White House balcony Monday that they should stop fearing Covid-19 and “don’t let it dominate you,” he attacked the media Tuesday for not paying more attention to what he said were his many successes.

“The Fake News Media refuses to discuss how good the Economy and Stock Market, including JOBS under the Trump Administration, are doing. We will soon be in RECORD TERRITORY,” he tweeted.

“All they want to discuss is COVID 19, where they won’t say it, but we beat the Dems all day long, also!!!”

But Trump is in trouble on almost every front and what used to be his strongest card — the economy — is not helping either.

The huge shock caused by this year’s coronavirus shutdown has yet to dissipate, and on Tuesday there was more turmoil when Trump halted negotiations in Congress on another stimulus package to save struggling businesses.

Trump accused Democrats of seeking “to bailout poorly run, high crime, Democrat States” and said that negotiations could begin again only after the election — “after I win.”

The Republican’s hardball tactics drew a furious response from Biden, who said Trump “turned his back” on Americans struggling due to the crisis.

– Battlefield call for unity –
Biden also stuck to his so-far successful strategy of appealing to a broad-based yearning for calm, with his visit to the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg to discuss saving “the soul of America.”

“The forces of darkness, the forces of division, the forces of yesterday are pulling us apart, holding us down and holding us back,” Biden said at the hallowed Pennsylvania grounds where Abraham Lincoln’s Union forces won a decisive victory over Confederate troops in 1863.

“We can end this era of division, we can end the hate and the fear. We can be what we are at our best — the United States of America,” he said.

Biden and Trump are scheduled to square off again on October 15, but Biden told reporters: “If he still has COVID, we shouldn’t have a debate.”

“It’s a very serious problem, so I will be guided by… what the docs say is the right thing to do,” Biden said.

His running mate Kamala Harris, meanwhile, was set to debate Vice President Mike Pence in Utah Wednesday, with a plexiglass barrier for coronavirus prevention between the two.

Giving Biden another lift Tuesday, popular former first lady Michelle Obama issued a 24-minute video address in which she branded Trump “racist” and urged people to vote for Biden “like your lives depend on it.”

– White House Covid spread –
Trump is working overtime to persuade voters that he is back to full strength despite the hospitalization.

“FEELING GREAT!” he tweeted, also insisting that he is “looking forward” to holding a second scheduled debate against Biden in Miami on October 15.

And in a medical bulletin, the presidential doctor said Trump “reports no symptoms” and “continues to do extremely well.”

However, indicating the breadth of the coronavirus crisis overshadowing Trump politically and now personally, a viral outbreak continued to sweep through his inner circle.

Top White House aide Stephen Miller confirmed Tuesday that he had tested positive for Covid-19 and was in quarantine.

US media also reported that a military aide responsible for carrying the “nuclear football” — a briefcase containing information for the president to launch a nuclear attack while traveling — tested positive for coronavirus over the weekend. The aide had traveled with Trump to New Jersey on Thursday.

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley also went into quarantine following contact with an infected Coast Guard officer, a Pentagon source said.

There had been speculation, even among some Republicans, that Trump might emerge from hospital chastened or at least with a new tone of empathy.

But on Twitter he returned to one of his oldest lines of argument used to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic, saying it was comparable to the ordinary flu and “we have learned to live with it.”

Twitter hid the tweet, saying that it broke the platform’s rules on “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information.”

sms/jm/to/jh

© Agence France-Presse

/AFP

by Catherine TRIOMPHE

How healthy is Donald Trump, really? Contradictory and incomplete information from officials since the president contracted coronavirus confirms that the health of the White House incumbent is a well-kept secret.

Analysts also say Trump has displayed a savvy use of digital tools to try to steer coverage of the first major presidential health crisis of the social media age.

Since the Friday announcement of Trump’s positive test, his personal doctor Sean Conley has been accused of giving fragmented and confusing information that conflicted with what Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was saying.

According to Matthew Algeo, the author of several books about the recurring lies of US leaders, presidents are not compelled to be forthcoming about their health, so it’s no surprise if they are not.

“We just basically are operating on the honor system when it comes to our president’s health,” he said.

With Trump’s reelection bid less than a month away, now is not the time to look less than fully fit, analysts say.

“Presidents hate to look weak, all politicians hate to look weak. They’ll do anything to avoid that,” said Algeo.

Rose McDermott, a specialist in the health of American presidents at Brown University, says the fact that a president’s doctor is generally also a serviceman — in Conley’s case, a Navy officer — is “structurally” a conflict of interest.

“He’s both the president’s doctor, and the president is also his commander in chief,” she said.

“Which means that if the president doesn’t like what he says about him, he can fire him… and he can do things like take away his pension.”

– Wilson, JFK –
The history of US presidents is littered with lies about their health.

Woodrow Wilson suffered a severe stroke during his presidency in the fall of 1919 that partially paralysed him, but no one spoke of it until February 1920.

Dwight Eisenhower downplayed the severity of a heart attack he suffered in 1955, while John F. Kennedy never spoke of his life-threatening Addison’s disease.

Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 led to the adoption four years later of the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, which clarified that the vice president takes over if the president dies or is incapacitated.

However, apart from a clear and serious injury — such as when Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded in 1981 and his powers temporarily transferred to then-vice president George Bush — the circumstances in which Congress can declare a president incapable of performing his duties are not clearly defined, Algeo says.

The increased media glare and widespread use of social media has not fostered transparency, analysts argue, even if presidents can no longer hide from the public for four months like Wilson did.

Especially since the current incumbent is a reality TV star turned frantic tweeter who knows how to be the center of attention, according to Emerson Brooking of the Atlantic Council think-tank.

Trump has kept the media on their toes since Friday, drip-feeding carefully conceived impactful videos of himself that allude to him beating the virus and driving by supporters outside the hospital on Sunday. The culmination was his return to the White House on Monday, which Brooking describes as like “a movie trailer.”

“Trump intuitively understands the speed of the modern news cycle,” said Brooking.

“If the press are discussing or criticizing Trump’s latest piece of content, they are not asking other questions about Covid-19 policy or invoking the 25th Amendment,” he added.

– Independent oversight? –
Amidst the lack of transparency, some experts are calling for the creation of a commission of independent doctors to check on the president’s health.

The calls have been given impetus by the advanced years of Trump, who at 74 is America’s oldest-ever president, and his Democratic rival Joe Biden, who is 77.

“Maybe you don’t have every detail given to the public, but you have an independent board saying, ‘Yes, this person is physically fit, or as fit as can be expected,'” said McDermott.

The calls have so far been unsuccessful in the US, as they have been in other western countries.

It’s not only in America where the health of the country’s leader is taboo, McDermott notes.

Authoritarian regimes are obvious examples, but citizens are often reduced to speculation in democratic countries as well.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been praised for her handling of the pandemic, was coy about trembling hands she suffered in public in 2019.

“I don’t see anyone who’s done an exemplary job of like, once a year, coming out and releasing medical information in the way that many leaders in the US disclose their taxes,” said McDermott.

cat/pdh/to/je

© Agence France-Presse

/AFP