President Trump tonight called the coronavirus pandemic a ‘lovefest’ and proclaimed that he was newly ‘immune,’ threatening to kiss members of his Florida rally crowd.
One week after being discharged from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Trump spoke for about an hour before a crowd of supporters at an airport in Sanford, Fla.
He touted his administration’s effort to fast-track a coronavirus vaccine and promised a swift economic recovery on his watch, even as stimulus negotiations with Capitol Hill appeared stalled.
‘One thing with me, the nice part: I went through it, now they say I’m immune,’ Trump said. ‘I feel so powerful, I’ll walk into that audience. I’ll walk in there, I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women, everyone, I’ll just give you a big fat kiss.’
Trump was marking his official return to the campaign trail after his battle fighting the coronavirus, tossing masks out to the crowd as he walked onstage.
‘It’s great to be back in my home state Florida to make my official return to the campaign trail,’ he told a crowd of mostly mask-less supporters. ‘I was so energized by your prayers and humbled by your support.’
Hardly his home state, Trump only moved from New York to Florida last year.
Trump again pledged to give Americans en masse the ‘cure’ of drugs he was administered during his hospitalization for COVID-19.
‘We are going to take whatever the hell they gave me and we are going to distribute it around to hospitals and everyone’s going to have the same damn thing,’ Trump told his crowd.
He thanked the professionals at Walter Reed Medical Center and John Hopkins, the team of doctors who treated him.
‘I have such respect for the people in this country the way they’ve handled it, it’s been an incredible lovefest together,’ Trump told the crowd. ‘That’s really what it’s been.’
Trump claimed that his rival Joe Biden, who has said he would follow scientists if they recommended future shutdowns to combat the virus, would hamper the economic recovery and “prolong” the pandemic.
He also criticized Democratic governors for what he described as overly strict coronavirus restrictions, warning that “the cure cannot be worse” than the virus.
“Biden would terminate our recovery, delay the vaccine, prolong the pandemic, and annihilate Florida’s economy with a draconian, unscientific lockdown,” he claimed.
Trump repeatedly referred back to his own battle with the coronavirus, thanking his doctors and falsely describing an experimental treatment he received as “cure” for the virus.
Little is known about how long a patient may be immune from COVID-19 and there have been reports of individuals being infected twice.
The event made clear that Trump does not plan to change his approach to campaigning amid the pandemic, even following his own bout with COVID-19.
Trump did not wear a mask, and many in the crowd were also mask-less and closely packed together.
Ahead of his arrival in Florida, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, warned on CNN that such large rallies were “asking for trouble” as coronavirus cases rise across the U.S.
Trump’s speech included many of the riffs he regularly uses on the campaign trail.
For the past 10 days, Trump has been off the campaign trail recovering from the coronavirus after revealing his diagnosis on Oct. 2.
Trump made his first public speaking appearance since then on Saturday afternoon, delivering a brief 20-minute speech on “law and order” to guests on the White House lawn.
There were questions about Trump’s condition leading up to Monday’s event.
Sean Conley, the White House physician, issued a memo two hours before Trump landed in Florida stating that the president had tested negative for COVID-19 “on consecutive days,” without naming the particular days.
Conley had cleared Trump to resume public events last week but has provided limited information about his case.
The president’s appearance in Florida marks the first of four rallies he is scheduled to hold this week in the same number of days.
Trump is slated to travel to Pennsylvania tomorrow, Iowa on Wednesday and North Carolina on Thursday as he looks to galvanize his support about three weeks from Election Day.
Trump is targeting key battleground states this week as polls show him in an uphill battle for reelection against Biden.
In Florida, a state Trump won in 2016, recent polls show Biden with a slight edge over the incumbent.
Trump disputed the public polls in the Sunshine State on Monday, and asserted that he would win a second term in the White House.
“We are going to have an even greater and more important victory than we had just four years ago,” he said.
Biden was in Ohio today, which is critical for Trump’s reelection hopes.
Trump won Ohio in 2016 by more than 8 points, but the Obama-Biden ticket won the state in 2008 and again in 2012.
‘Biden had a bad day,’ Trump said. ‘He forgot Mitt Romney’s name, he didn’t know what state he was in. And he said today he’s a proud Democrat running for the U.S. Senate.’
‘Can you imagine if I did that?’ Trump asked.
Shortly after, the 74-year-old Trump stumbled over his own words referring to 2016 as a year ago.
Fauci said such rallies are ‘asking for trouble.’
He argued this it the ‘worst time’ to have rallies.
‘When you look at what’s going on in the United States, it’s really very troublesome,’ he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday. ‘A number of states right now are having increase in test positivity.’