The Times - UK (2020-08-03)

the times | Monday August 3 2020 2GM 29

The World at Five

Europe’s last despot playing a

high-stakes game with Russia

In depth and online today at 5pm

thetimes.co.uk

Trump relaunches

campaign as funds

flood in for Biden

President Trump will attempt to revive

his bid for re-election today with a new

attack advert against his presumptive

Democratic rival Joe Biden and a fresh

strategy targeting early-voting states.

During a tough July for the White

House the president failed to signifi-

cantly dent Mr Biden’s polling lead,

which averages more than 7 percentage

points nationally.

Coronavirus cases exploded across

the country, the worst economic crisis

since the Great Depression deepened

and Republican officials at all levels un-

characteristically broke ranks to dis-

miss Mr Trump’s suggestion that the

election might need to be postponed

because of concerns over voter fraud.

The campaign’s struggle to craft a

winning message has taken on extra ur-

gency because of the failure to contain

the pandemic, which is expected to per-

suade more Americans than ever to

vote by post, meaning that they will

place their vote well before election day

on November 3.

Bill Stepien, who became the cam-

paign’s manager a fortnight ago, pulled

most of its national advertising off TV

last week to conserve funds while a new

plan took shape. “It would be malprac-

tice if we didn’t re-examine that we are

spending money in the right places on

the right message,” he told Politico.

Mr Trump filed for re-election on the

same day that he took office in 2017 and

has built a deeper war chest than any

candidate in history at this stage, but he

has already spent most of it, and Mr

Biden, who is now outraising him, has

almost as much cash on hand.

The Trump campaign invested less

than $1 million on airtime in the final

week of July, having spent between

$9 million and $12 million in each of the

preceding four weeks, according to data

from the political-advert tracker Kant-

ar/CMAG. Mr Biden’s campaign spent

more than $10 million on advertising

last week according to the data, which

was cited by The Wall Street Journal.

The distribution of the two cam-

paigns’ spending was also revealing. For

now at least the president’s campaign

has ceded turf in Michigan, a state that

he flipped from the Democrats in 2016

and which has long been regarded as

one of the key battlegrounds. Since

mid-July the Trump campaign has

spent less than $100,000 on TV adver-

tising there, while investing more than

that in ten other states, including Geor-

gia, Iowa and Ohio. Mr Trump won

comfortably four years ago in those

states that were not expected to be

competitive until recently.

America First, the main political

funding committee supporting his re-

election, has also stopped spending in

Michigan. The Biden campaign has

been boosting its spending in Michigan

since mid-June, and invested $1 million

there last week. On Thursday it also an-

nounced a seven-figure digital and tele-

vision ad buy in Ohio. Yesterday a CBS

News poll showed Mr Biden with a

single percentage-point lead in Geor-

gia.

The new approach is expected to tar-

get contested states that will begin in-

person and postal voting by the end of

next month. Florida, North Carolina

and Pennsylvania meet those criteria,

as does Michigan.

Mr Trump previewed the fresh offen-

sive in a tweet on Friday that renewed

his charge that Mr Biden had become a

hostage to the far-left faction in his

party. “We are doing a new ad cam-

paign on Sleepy Joe Biden that will be

out on Monday,” he wrote. “He has been

brought even further LEFT than Crazy

Bernie Sanders ever thought possible.”

Democrats yesterday continued to

exploit Mr Trump’s proposal to delay

the election, which he lacks the author-

ity to carry out.

“I don’t think he plans to leave the

White House,” James Clyburn, the

highest-ranking black politician in

Congress and a close ally of Mr Biden,

told CNN. He compared the president’s

“strongarm tactics” to those of Musso-

lini. “I believe that he plans to install

himself in some kind of emergency way

to continue to hold on to office,” he said.

Mr Trump’s White House chief of

staff told CBS that the president had

simply been raising concerns about the

security of postal ballots when he sent

his tweet. Mark Meadows said: “We’re

going to hold an election on November

3 and the president is going to win.”

United States

Ben Hoyle Los Angeles

face transplant patient dies after 12 years

decision to undergo a sometimes

daunting procedure is an enduring gift

for all of humanity,” he added.

Mrs Culp was shot in 2004 by

Thomas Culp, her husband, who, think-

ing he had killed her, turned his shot-

gun on himself. Both survived but most

of Mrs Culp’s face was destroyed.

She underwent more than 30 opera-

tions including surgery that fashioned

cheekbones from her ribs and a new up-

per jaw using one of her leg bones.

In 2008 she had a 22-hour operation

to restore 80 per cent of her face, using

bone, muscle, skin and blood vessels

taken from Anna Kasper, 44, a donor

who had died of a heart attack.

It was the fourth time that a face

transplant had been carried out. The

first was in France in 2005.

The surgery aimed to not only re-

store the structure of Mrs Culp’s face

but her ability to taste, smell, eat and

breathe unaided. Her brain was re-

trained to recognise aromas such as

coffee, chocolate and bananas, and she

learnt to talk again. In 2009 she said she

could smell flowers brought to her by

her four-year-old grandson.

Mrs Culp shared her story publicly to

help other transplant patients and sur-

vivors of domestic abuse.

She publicly forgave her husband

and declared her love for him at his trial

for attempted murder. She told the

judge that she would wait for him after

he was jailed for seven years.

Following his release, however, Mrs

Culp declined to reunite with him, say-

ing that their daughter had confronted

her with the question: “What kind of

example would you set for me if you

went back to the man that shot you?”

Butchers brew up meat juice to

keep customers in their prime

Freshly pressed fruit and vegetable

drinks are available on every high

street. Now a family of butchers think

the world is ready for the meat version.

Peter and Philipp Klassen are mar-

keting a “meat juice” brewed from left-

over cuts as a health tonic for athletes,

convalescents and the elderly.

“Many people thought we were

mad,” the family say on the website of

their butcher’s shop in Temmels, near

the Luxembourg border. After three

years and €2 million spent on tinkering,

“Pete and Phil’s” meat juices are now

available, with a 330ml bottle costing

€4.86 online. The varieties include

tomato and chilli-flavoured Beef

Bombay, and Butcher’s Beef with honey

and cocoa.

Peter Klassen said that he was

convinced that snacking on meat juices

would soon be considered normal.

“I just can’t understand it when

people say it’s disgusting,” he told the

Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszei-

tung. Tasters have described the drink

as “like a ready-made soup, just cold”.

Germany

Oliver Moody Berlin

RINGO H.W. CHIU/AP; JOSH EDELSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Thousands told

to leave homes

in face of huge

California fire

T

housands of Californians

were told to leave their

homes over the weekend

as firefighters fought in

vain to contain a large

wildfire less than 100 miles east of

Los Angeles (Ben Hoyle writes).

The blaze — called the Apple

fire by local fire crews — started

on Friday afternoon in a

residential area close to the edge

of the San Bernardino National

Forest and expanded as

temperatures on Saturday

exceeded 37C, prompting an

extreme heat warning from the

National Weather Service.

More than 370 firefighters, aided

by helicopters and air tankers

dumping water, fought to rescue

homes and limit the spread of the

blaze in Cherry Valley at the foot of

San Gorgonio Mountain, the tallest

peak in southern California.

About 7,800 residents in more

than 2,500 households were told to

evacuate their homes by Saturday

afternoon, said April Newman, a

public information officer with the

California Department of Forestry

and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) and

the Riverside County Fire

Department.

By Saturday night the fire had

burnt 12,000 acres and was “0 per

cent contained”, the state fire

agency said.

Cal Fire said that it was one of

the largest wildfires of the year in

California, where 78,823 acres

have burnt in 2020, with no deaths

to date. The state’s worst wildfire

season was in 2018, when 7,500

fires burnt more than 1,670,000

acres, killing at least 100 people.

20 miles

SanSSSanann

DiegDDDiegoegogo

CALIFORNIA Apple

wildfire

CherrCCCherryhhererryry

ValleyVVVaey

LosLLoLosLos

AngelesAngeAnAngengngelesngelesgegggelesles

Connie Culp, who

had more than 30

operations, died

after an infection