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It was a mic drop designed to thrill conservatives and infuriate liberals and the media.

Kayleigh McEnany, the latest White House press secretary aiming to become the acceptable face of Trumpism, had been asked if she wanted to take back a bold prediction in February that we will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here.

I guess I would turn the question back on the media, and ask similar questions, McEnany said on Wednesday. Consulting her briefing book, she reeled off a list of outlets and articles she said had downplayed the threat.

Ill leave you with those questions, she said, and maybe youll have some answers in a few days.

And with a triumphant smile she stepped away from the lectern, ignoring shouted questions. Reporters wore surprised and stony faces, then relaxed into wry smiles. It was a classic piece of whataboutism as practised by pundits on cable news.

The TV president now has a TV emissary, a spokesperson who sometimes takes her eyes off the reporters in the room and looks directly into the camera. McEnany is from what the president likes to call central casting: a polished performer, devout Christian and devout Trumpian. And she is only 32.

Kayleigh McEnany: beautiful, Christian, conservative designed by nature to enrage MSNBC viewers, tweeted Ann Coulter, a rightwing author and commentator, referring to the liberal-leaning network whose hosts often eviscerate the president.

Read or listen to her words prior to her decision to jump on the Trump train. She is a completely different person

But to critics, McEnany is a Trump apologist trying to explain the inexplicable and excuse the inexcusable. They characterise her as an opportunist motivated by fame and power rather than any ideological faith. They say she has abandoned her religious principles to normalise a president widely condemned as a misogynist and racist.

The eldest child of a roofing contractor, McEnany is from Plant City, Florida, which she describes as the worlds strawberry capital. She attended the Academy of the Holy Names Catholic high school in Tampa and found time to volunteer for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004. She moved to Washington to study at Georgetown, took an exchange year at Oxford to study politics and served an internship in the Bush White House.

After graduating in 2010, she worked for three years as a production assistant at Fox News for Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and father of Sarah Sanders, Trumps second press secretary. In 2012, she wrote a tweet about Barack Obama, the countrys first black president, that has come back to haunt her: How I Met Your Brother Never mind, forgot hes still in that hut in Kenya. #ObamaTVShows.

McEnany wanted a job in front of the camera but couldnt get a break. Eventually she decided to become a student again, first at the University of Miami School of Law, then transferring to Harvard. Huckabee told the New York Times last month: I think one of the reasons that Kayleigh went on to law school was because she didnt see she was going to have an on-air opportunity at Fox any time soon.

But in 2015, McEnany received some intriguing career advice over cocktails from Michael Marcantonio, a fellow summer associate at a law firm and a Democrat. In an interview with the New York Times, he recalled telling her Donald Trump is going to be your nominee, adding that if a smart, young, blond Harvard graduate wanted to get on television and have a career as a political pundit, you would be wise to be an early backer.

McEnany did so. Networks were struggling to find eloquent champions of the Trump cause but she fitted the bill. She became a paid contributor on CNN, feeding the outrage machine and the concept of cable news as combat sport.

A political commentator acquainted with McEnany, who did not wish to be named, said: They brought her on board when it became pretty clear that there were few people who were willing to defend Donald Trump that were somewhat sane. Most people who were credible and experienced were not willing to put their names or reputations on the line to defend Donald Trumps crazy during 2016.

In June 2015, McEnany had described Trumps comments about Mexican migrants as racist and dismissed him as a showman. She quickly changed her tune. The source said: She is unrecognisable. If you were to read or listen to her words prior to her decision to sell her soul and jump on the Trump train, she is a completely different person.

To Trump supporters, McEnanys ability to rile liberals made her something of a heroine. Even at the nadir of the Trump candidacy, when an Access Hollywood tape revealed him boasting about grabbing womens genitalia, she had his back, saying: Those comments are despicable [but] he apologised for them.

Sean Hannity, a Fox News host, wrote in a forward to McEnanys book, The New American Revolution: The Making of a Populist Movement: Outnumbered 8-to-1, or if she was lucky, 7-to-2, Kayleigh never backed down in fighting for the conservative movement supporting Donald Trump.

Jason Miller, who also appeared as a pro-Trump pundit on CNN and is now co-host of the podcast War Room: Pandemic, said: Keep in mind that she went through a couple of years of being a CNN political commentator where she was rumbling with Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo and Van Jones and Ana Navarro and every other hater thats out there.

So if Kayleigh can go toe to toe with the toughest anchors and commentators on TV, shell do just fine with the White House press corps.

Once Trump had stunned the world by winning the White House in 2016, McEnany joined the Republican National Committee as spokeswoman, then moved to the Trump campaign in a similar role. She would sometimes work 18 or 20 hours a day, according to Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign.

Kayleigh was fantastic, he said. Shes smart, shes energetic, shes engaged and shes the most prepared person that I know. She has a keen grasp of policy and is able to turn what are sometimes complicated policy matters into language that is easily digested by the listener.

Murtaugh accused opponents of discriminating against McEnany because of her looks and gender.

The first thing the liberals want to do when they see an attractive young woman in a position like this is they want to question her intelligence. And I would just say to people, you underestimate Kayleigh McEnany at your own peril. I dont think that theyre turning out too many dummies from Oxford and Harvard Law School.

Murtaugh also recalled how McEnany organised a Bible study group with other staff that met weekly in a conference room at campaign HQ in Arlington, Virginia. Since the pandemic lockdown, the group has continued to meet virtually.

Like many evangelicals, McEnany apparently sees no contradiction between Trumps behaviour and Christian values. Two years ago, when she had a preventative double mastectomy because of a BRCA2 genetic mutation that had put her at high risk of breast cancer, she wrote: My faith in Jesus Christ was my strength that day.

I will never lie to you. You have my word on that

She is an ardent admirer of Ravi Zacharias, a preacher whose organisation included a study centre in Oxford. She wrote in 2013: Oxford needed a Christian to respond to Richard Dawkins. Found that in Ravi, who has dismantled atheism. This week her sister, Ryann, who also works for the Trump campaign, tweeted: Watching my sister take the stage for her first White House press briefing last Friday was a surreal moment! Gods spirit was ever-present in that room and undeniably flowing through you.

In 2017 McEnany married Sean Gilmartin, a pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays. She posed with Blake, the couples five-month-old daughter, at the White House lectern after her debut briefing, the first by a press secretary in more than 13 months, where she declared: I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.

She now has three briefings under her belt. She has echoed Trumps false and misleading statements but avoided major controversy and, importantly, avoided stealing too much of his limelight.

Kurt Bardella, a political analyst and Trump critic who bested McEnany in a debate on gun control on MSNBC, said: Kayleigh is very on point, succinct, direct and speaks with a lot of confidence and comfort from the podium.

Like Conway, Bardella believes, McEnany saw a chance for career advancement and seized it.

Outside of the president, the White House press secretary traditionally is the most visible person in the administration. This is something that she will be able to live off of for the rest of her life.

I dont think that its diehard ideological alignment more than just an opportunity. Donald Trump is a person with no ideology or core conviction. This is someone whose core ideology is nothing more than whatever is transactional and advantageous to him at that moment in time.

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Kayleigh McEnany the 'acceptable' face of Trumpism who infuriates liberals - The Guardian

But President Donald J. Trump? He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody... and not a single major daily newspaper would call for his resignation. I admit that -- just like the original Trump quote it references -- that Fifth Avenue statement is a bit hyperbolic, but think about it:After three years of political and actual carnage under Trump, including Robert Mueller's description of acts that amounted to, he told Congress, obstruction of justice; Trump's "fine people on both sides" reaction to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville where a counter-protester was killed; his rampant conflicts of interest and credible accusations of his violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution; his close to 17,000 false statements; a travel ban that primarily targets mostly Muslim-majority countries; impeachment for alleged extortion of a foreign government (he was acquitted in the Republican Senate), and the gross mishandling of a deadly pandemic, you'd think somebody on an editorial board might say it's time for the President to leave.

But this has not happened. Why not?

Not knowing the answer, I set out to talk to a lot of smart people to find out why.

I did this because history would lead you to believe that most of the editorial boards of America's newspapers/digital sites would have stepped up to that plate already. To be clear, editorial boards are the group of writers and editors behind the daily editorials on the news -- appearing in the editorial pages -- that reflect the newspaper's values. These are separate from the "op-eds" commissioned by opinion editors from outside writers that reflect a range of views -- often at odds with those of the editorial board.

Pulling no punches on Nixon and Clinton

The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment for Nixon and sent them to the House; he resigned before they could vote on them.

Twenty-four years later, in 1998, more than 100 newspapers called for the resignation of President Bill Clinton, both during the Kenneth Starr investigation and the subsequent impeachment trial for obstruction of justice and perjury, over his affair with a White House intern.

Peter R. Bronson, then-editorial page editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, told the Times, "'As soon as we saw the Starr report and got knee deep, we said, 'This really smells, we've seen enough, the evidence is compelling and damning,''' Mr. Bronson said.

The ground shifts

And Trump's offenses were much more far reaching than Clinton's: he used American foreign policy to leverage a political favor, and he's also certainly had a fair share of tawdry scandals

What has changed?

Just about everything, it seems, beginning with the media: the explosion of 24/7 news networks and the endless horizon of internet-on-demand caused some newspapers to fold or shrink and lose relevance. The lucky few left standing wobbled through a decade trying to claw their way back into news dominance. Papers lost advertisers, lost readers and increasingly lost influence with the public, particularly the editorial pages: so much opinion journalism was readily available from so many other new online sources.

Why have so many editorial pages railed -- over and over -- against Trump's behavior in the most vehement terms, through scandal, impeachment, botched pandemic response and much more, and yet they won't call for him to go?

Editorial boards' new reluctance

I put this question to more than a dozen experts, media columnists, editorial writers, academics and White House reporters. What emerged was not one simple explanation, as journalism professor Jay Rosen of New York University explained it, but a number of factors that have discouraged editorial pages around the country from taking this bold step.

Central to these, according to John Avlon, a senior political analyst at CNN and the former editor in chief of the Daily Beast, is that "the reality of the hardened partisanship is beyond reason. We've become really unmoored from our best civic traditions." And one of our best civic traditions used to be holding political leaders to account -- demanding, in extreme situations, that they resign.

See more here:
Why aren't editorial boards screaming: Trump has to go? - CNN

Even in an episode producedin isolation, Saturday Night Lives season finale opener delivered. The cast joined a virtual commencement ceremonyin which Donald Trump, played by Alec Baldwin, is the only speaker that was available to the class of high school seniors.

I asked you to vote today on who should be the keynote speaker, Kate McKinnons Principal OGrady tells the class, via Zoom. Unfortunately, Barack and Michelle Obama said no, as did your next five choices, which included Guns N Roses frontman Axl Rose, the murder hornets, Liberty Mutuals LiMu Emu, that dude from 90-Day Fiance who looked like a hedgehog, and the Elon Musk/Grimes baby. So I moved on to your eighth choice, receiving one vote, President Donald Trump.

Baldwins Trump congratulates the class of COVID-19, and jumps into a lecture in whichhe claims hes been treated even worse than they treated Lincoln, praises his online college for ranking number one craziest scam by US News, and sips from a Clorox bleach container, which he refers to as invincibility juice.

He leavesthe students with an inspirational quote: Reach for the stars because if youre a star, theyll let you do it.

Watch the full sketch below.

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Donald Trump Is Going to Hate SNL's Season Finale Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Illustration by Joo Fazenda

When an Ebola epidemic erupted in West Africa, in 2014, the United States and China, the worlds two largest economic powers, responded in starkly different fashions. The Obama Administration dispatched the 101st Airborne and other troops to build treatment hospitals, and donated more than half of the $3.9 billion in relief funds collected from governments worldwide. Within six months, the outbreak was under control, and the U.S.-led effort was hailed as a template for handling future epidemics.

Chinese mining and construction firms had big businesses in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, but Beijing struggled to mount a humanitarian response. Between August and October of that year, nearly ten thousand Chinese nationals fled those countries in a panic. China, unaccustomed to such missions, sent medical teams and supplies, but, over all, it contributed less than four per cent of the relief funds.

Six years later, however, neither nation can claim to have led the way in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, which has so far killed more than a quarter of a million people around the world. The efforts of both have been marred by denial, coverup, and self-deception. President Donald Trumps trade war and President Xi Jinpings hostility to Western influence had already frayed the countries relationship to its most fragile point in decades. Now, in a bid to deflect criticism, they are turning against each other in perilous ways.

For President Xi, containing the disease, which first emerged in Hubei Province four months ago, has been a race against both a public-health and a political calamity. After initially silencing doctors who reported the virus, Beijing gained control of the outbreak by locking down Hubei, testing millions of people, and quarantining suspected cases, even if it required forcibly removing residents from their homes. By mid-March, China was reporting nearly no new cases, a claim that outside experts considered doubtful but in the neighborhood of truth.

Shaping the narrative of Chinas role in the pandemic will be more difficult. In April, the Associated Press obtained government documents showing that leaders in Beijing knew the potential scale of the threat by January 14th, but Xi waited six days before warning the publica catastrophic interlude of dinners, train rides, and handshakes that helped unleash the pandemic. The government staged a public-relations offensive, touting Chinas exports of medical gear to other nationsa tactic dubbed mask diplomacy. It also suggested, with no evidence, that the source of the virus was a delegation from the United States that had participated in the Military World Games in Wuhan in October. The offensive backfired: buyers complained of faulty or undelivered shipments, and U.S. officials accused China of using social media to promote divisive and false information.

The Trump Administration, for its part, has cut off funds to the World Health Organization and declined to join the European-led fund for vaccine research. Trumps delusionsthat the virus would vanish in a miracle, that an antimalarial drug would shortcut science, that ingesting disinfectant could helphave further reduced the Administrations reputation to a baleful farce. Last week, Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia, wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Administration had left an indelible impression around the world of a country incapable of handling its own crises, let alone anybody elses. In Rudds view, the uncomfortable truth is that China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished.

The Administration could credibly have criticized Chinas early mishandling of the virus, and its efforts to control international scrutiny of the viruss origins. Instead, the White House seized on a blame-Beijing strategy to undermine Chinas growing global power and shore up Trumps bid for relection. (An ad from a pro-Trump super PAC says, To stop China, you have to stop Joe Biden.) Unnamed Administration officials floated revenge fantasies to reporters, such as abandoning U.S. debt obligations to China, an act that, investors noted, would gut Americas financial credibility. As Adam Posen, the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told the Washington Post, In economic terms, this is worse than telling people to drink bleach.

In the riskiest line of attack, members of the Administration, conservative lawmakers, including Senator Tom Cotton, and Fox News have promoted an unverified theory that the coronavirus may have originated in an accidental leak from a Chinese virology lab. On April 30th, Trump said that he had seen convincing evidence of this, but gave no details. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo followed up three days later, claiming simply that there was enormous evidence to support the theory. More credible voicesincluding those of Anthony Fauci, the governments top expert on infectious diseases, and General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffhave declined to endorse that view.

Yet Trump and Pompeos rhetoric has some in the intelligence community concerned that the Administration may try to push on the origins of the virus much the way that, in 2002, Vice-President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, pressured intelligence agencies to provide material that might support the theory that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Chris Johnson, a former China analyst at the C.I.A. who now heads the China Strategies Group, said, If we have a smoking gun, the Administration would have leaked it. There are specters of Libby and Cheney, and it worries me.

More worrying, perhaps, this month in Beijing the Ministry of State Security presented to Xi and other leaders an assessment that reportedly describes the current hostilities as creating the most inhospitable diplomatic environment since the Tiananmen Square massacre. According to Reuters, some members of Chinas intelligence community regard the assessment as a Chinese version of the Novikov Telegram, a 1946 dispatch that the Soviet Ambassador to Washington, Nikolai Novikov, sent to Moscow, forecasting the advent of the Cold War.

To John Gaddis, the dean of Cold War historians, Americas advantage over the Soviet Union hinged less on aggression than on competent governance. The country can be no stronger in the world than it is at home, he said. This was the basis for projecting power onto the world scene. Weve lost that at home right now. If the Trump Administration uses the coronavirus to heighten its conflict with China, it will not only have ignored a basic lesson of U.S. history; it will expose America to yet another crisis for which it is plainly unprepared.

Read more from the original source:
The Folly of Trumps Blame-Beijing Coronavirus Strategy - The New Yorker

Miami resident Elisaul Herrera, who became a U.S. citizen along with his wife earlier this year, will cast his first presidential ballot this November for Donald Trump.

Elisa Mora, a high school counselor from Orlando who is a registered independent voter, says she'll support Joe Biden.

Neither sees the coronavirus crisis which has killed at least 1,700 people in the state and wreaked havoc on parts of the economy as a factor in their decision. Herrera said his choice would be motivated by the administrations policies toward his native Venezuela, while Mora said she was motivated by Bidens approach to immigration and his message of inclusiveness.

Interviews with Floridians as well as numerous current and former lawmakers, political strategists, politics watchers and academics in Florida paint a picture of a battleground state largely unmoved by the Trump administrations disjointed pandemic response and Bidens myriad proposals to handle things differently.

Unlike in Pennsylvania, a swing state where Trump's re-election hopes seem more closely tied to the fallout of the pandemic, the electoral picture in Florida heading into the fall appears to resemble any other presidential election year: a diverse, 50-50 state that will be won at the margins, driven largely by the economic picture and by how well each campaign is able to reach independent and undecided voters.

Because the economic toll in Florida, by some metrics, has not been as devastating as in other states and because the Biden campaign has struggled with its efforts to reach voters virtually the president may end up being spared from major pandemic-specific political consequences, sources told NBC News.

The election here, more than any one in recent memory, is going to be an us versus them on both sides," Alan Clendenin, the Southern caucus chair for the Democratic National Committee and a resident of Tampa, said. "I dont know whos left as a persuadable voter. Folks have their minds made up, regardless of what happens with the pandemic, and its going to be a get-out-the-vote campaign."

Rick Wilson, a Florida-based veteran Republican strategist, added, You might say that Trumps head is on the chopping block, but that hes nowhere near being executed.

Florida the country's third-most-populous state and, as of October, the president's official permanent residence has hardly been spared the devastation of the coronavirus. As of Saturday night, the state hadthe eighth-most confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the 10th-most deaths from the virus in the U.S.

But its COVID-19 per capita death rate of 8 people per 100,000 is better than about half of other states and is well below therates of other states its size. Statewide, the curve of new cases appears to have flattened in recent weeks, even as the state reopened its economy on Monday.

In addition, about 60 percent of all cases in the state have occurred in the solidly blue trifecta of southern Florida counties Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach a concentration that could blunt electoral damage for Trump, sources told NBC News.

Meanwhile, the economic data can tell different stories depending on the interpretation. Since March 14, about 1.7 million workers in the state have lost their jobs.

That total is the third-highest number in the country, behind only California and New York. But how the figures break down as a percentage of the states workforce who have filed for unemployment actually puts Florida squarely in the middle of the pack: 16.2 percent, or a little less than 1 in 6 workers, have sought unemployment.

Because the pandemic is more likely to be painted as an economic issue in Florida, and not a public health matter, Trump may actually have an easier time recalibrating his general election message, strategists said.

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He had a very simple message to run on before, which was that he created a great economy and that the country was booming under his leadership, said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubios 2016 presidential campaign.

Now, it's a nuanced message, which is that he grew the economy before and that he can do it again, he added. The question again becomes who do voters trust more to create jobs, which favors Trump.

On the other hand, Florida has been beset by extraordinary problems relating to its state unemployment benefits system, for which voters may end up assigning blame to Trump, strategists and lawmakers said.

They will punish Trump for that in the fall, said Florida Democratic state Rep. Shev Jones, a Biden surrogate. People will not forget how Florida Republicans treated them.

At the moment, polls reflect a close race in the state fueled by modestly negative approval ratings for Trump, who narrowly won Florida in 2016 by 1.2 percentage points.

The latest RealClearPolitics polling average shows Biden leading Trump 46.5 percent to 43.3 percent inside all the comprising polls margin of error. An April 22 Quinnipiac poll showed 51 percent of registered Florida voters disapprove of the way the president was handling his pandemic response, with 46 percent saying they approve. On the other hand, 45 percent of respondents said they approve of the overall job he is doing as president his highest-ever mark in a Quinnipiac survey.

Political strategists from both parties, however, said Florida polling has often underreported GOP enthusiasm on models in previous elections due to a robust state party that is particularly skilled at turning out voters late in the race.

If youre a Democrat in a Florida poll and youre ahead, it means youre tied. Im not bullish on Biden until I see him up eight, 10 points here in a poll, Wilson said.

Only twice since 1928 Bill Clinton in 1992 and John F. Kennedy in 1960 has the winner of the general election not carried Florida's crucial 29 electoral votes, making it, arguably, the most critical battleground state.

Subsequently, the Biden campaign, mired in a virtual campaign that has seen the apparent nominee forced to relyon television appearances from his home studio in Delaware, has made Florida the genesis of its first state-specific virtual campaign events. He held a virtual roundtable with local lawmakers Thursday afternoon in Jacksonville and a virtual rally later in the day in Tampa.

But if the events were designed to show that Biden meant business in Florida, they fell short.

The afternoon roundtable was not broadcast. The evening rally featured several long-winded and awkward introductions from Florida lawmakers and a 65-year-old DJ named Jack Henriquez plagued by technical glitches, including audio delays and a total blackout that lasted several minutes.

When Biden finally came on 35 minutes after the event began, he appeared unprepared, saying, Did they introduce me?

Biden only spoke for about 10 minutes, giving a brief spiel that included a nod to the shrinking economy as well as an apology for the events flaws and a closing message drowned out by loudly chirping birds.

The campaign, however, has recently held other Florida-specific virtual events, including a virtual climate roundtable geared toward the state and a virtual town hall with gun control activist Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter was killed in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school shooting.

A campaign spokesperson told NBC News that Biden planned to hammer the economic troubles in Florida that have resulted from the pandemic and his campaign would continue, and expand, our aggressive outreach in Florida to turn that vision into votes."

Democratic lawmakers in south Florida, however, told NBC News they had, so far, not been satisfied with the Biden virtual campaigns outreach, especially to one key bloc of Florida voters: Latinos.

He is not reaching them at all at the moment, said Florida Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo, who represents a Miami-area district.

Meanwhile, Trump Victory, the joint operation between the Trump re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee, told NBC News since the campaign went digital-only on March 13, it has hosted at least 480 virtual trainings for campaign volunteers in Florida and made about 4 million voter contacts online in Florida.

Our campaign efforts in the state have not missed a beat, said Trump Victory spokesperson Rick Gorka.

Political strategists told NBC News that, assuming that Biden carries the reliably blue counties in the southeastern part of the state and Trump carries much of northern and central Florida, the likeliest path to victory in November would go through the so-called I-4 corridor, the area of the state running along the interstate between Tampa and Orlando that Floridians say is loaded with undecided and independent voters.

Among voters in those key counties is Christopher Talley, a 36-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, a city in Pinellas County, which Trump won in 2016 by 5,500 votes and Barack Obama won in 2012 by about 26,000.

Talley, a registered Democrat who has voted Republican in state races previously, said hell vote for Biden, citing the balance of the Supreme Court as his motivating issue.

Seeing how Trump can fill seats is terrifying, Talley said.

Not on his mind, however, is the pandemic. Talley didnt even mention it.

Adam Edelman reported from New York. Carmen Sesin reported from Miami.

Originally posted here:
Trump, Biden gear up for battle in Florida, where coronavirus isn't the only thing on voters' minds - NBCNews.com