The Latest: Trump plans to hold in-person event on Saturday
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the 2020 presidential campaign (all times local):
3:50 p.m.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump is planning to hold his first in-person event since testing positive for the coronavirus.
Two weeks after the Rose Garden event that is now considered a “superspreader,” Trump is planning to convene another large crowd outside the White House for an event on “law and order.” That’s despite the ongoing White House COVID-19 outbreak.
An official says Trump will address the group from a White House balcony. The official declined to say how many people had been invited.
White House doctor Sean Conley said in a memo Thursday that, “based on the trajectory of advanced diagnostics the team has been conducting,” he “fully anticipate(d) the President’s safe return to public engagements” as soon as Saturday.
Trump said during a Thursday interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that he is already planning rallies, too.
The event was first reported by ABC News.
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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE:
President Donald Trump is convalescing from the coronavirus at the White House. Democrat Joe Biden is campaigning in Nevada on Friday.
Read more:
— Election 2020 Today: Debates uncertain, election unrest prep
— Biden, Harris dodge questions about Supreme Court expansion
— On radio, TV, Trump sets out to get campaign back on track
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
3:40 p.m.
Joe Biden is heading back to Pennsylvania on Saturday, continuing his focus on his native state that President Donald Trump won narrowly in 2016.
Biden’s campaign announced Friday that he will travel to Erie, which is in one of the most populous counties nationally that flipped to Republican Donald Trump in 2016.
Trump won the county by about 1.5 percentage points. Democratic President Barack Obama won Erie County by 20 points and 16 points in his two national victories.
Erie will be especially critical for Biden as he focuses on winning more white voters beyond the state’s Democratic core in Philadelphia and its suburbs.
It’s Biden’s seventh trip to the state since the start of September.
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3:30 p.m.
Joe Biden is telling Latinos in Nevada that they can “determine the outcome” of the November election and help deliver a Democratic victory big enough to keep President Donald Trump from pushing “phony challenges” to the results.
The Democratic presidential nominee said Friday at the East Las Vegas Community Center that he can’t win without strong support from Hispanics.
Latinos are on track to surpass Black voters as the single largest nonwhite share of the U.S. electorate. Biden told a masked, socially distanced crowd that voting in decisive numbers is “the thing that guarantees significant influence over what happens next” because politicians respond to those that “delivered the vote.”
Biden drew parallels between his family lineage as Irish Catholic immigrants and much of the Latino community that he said is hurt by Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. Biden says “family and faith” link his experiences with the Hispanic community.
Early voting starts in Nevada on Oct. 17. Democrat Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016, but it remains a battleground.
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12:45 p.m.
President Donald Trump, still White House bound after his COVID-19 diagnosis, called into the Rush Limbaugh show for a radio “rally” with the conservative talk host.
Limbaugh started what he describe as a “mega, MAGA rally” — in which Trump is expected to take questions from callers — by praising Trump as the “strongest, most unwavering” leader. Limbaugh also called it “breathtaking” the difference between the Trump he knows and how he’s portrayed in the media.
Trump talked up his prospects in the face of grim polls, blamed media “poisoned by their own hatred “and assured Limbaugh that his recovery is going well.
The president, who was diagnosed on Oct. 1 with coronavirus and hospitalized for three days, says he wants to get back on the campaign trail as soon as this weekend.