42 2GM Saturday October 17 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
second son, in Ukraine. US intelligence
agencies were said to have alerted the
president in 2019 that intercepted com-
munications showed Mr Giuliani to be
the target of a Russian operation.
Robert O’Brien, Mr Trump’s national
security adviser, apparently cautioned
Mr Trump against using the claims that
Mr Giuliani brought back with him
from Ukraine; the president was said to
have “shrugged his shoulders” and re-
marked: “That’s Rudy.”
Yesterday Twitter reversed a policy
blocking its users from sharing the New
York Post story, under pressure from
Republicans who said the move
amounted to censorship and election
interference. It said it would now allow
people to post the article but would add
labels offering context about the source
of the information.
Separately, Caroline Rose Giuliani, 31,
daughter of the former New York
mayor, urged voters to choose Mr Bid-
en. She also told Vanity Fair that she had
“a difficult confession, something I
usually save for at least the second date:
my father is Rudy Giuliani”.Trump defiant as
Republicans warn
of Biden ‘tsunami’
United States
David Charter
Henry Zeffman Washington
First timers
a hazard for
Democrats
Analysis
W
ith 17
days
to go
until
the
presidential election
almost every sign is
good for Joe Biden
(Henry Zeffman
writes).
His poll lead has
risen from steadily
solid to landslide
territory, he is flush
with cash, and signs
from early votes are
encouraging. But one
under-noticed trend
confounds the
prevailing narrative.
In most states,
Americans can record
their party affiliation
when registering to
vote, usually to
determine whether
you can vote in party
primaries.
The statistics have
favoured the
Republicans in
important states. In
the swing state ofFlorida, the
Republicans have
added 344,465 voters
to the rolls since
March, whereas the
Democrats have
added only 197,821.
In Pennsylvania,
perhaps the most
important state this
time, the Republicans
have gained 135,619
registered voters since
June to the
Democrats’ 38,137.
If you were looking
somewhere for a sign
that President Trump
does indeed have a
silent bank of voters
preparing to come out
and back him for the
first time, these
statistics might be it.
In 2016 there were 2.4
million eligible white
people without
university degrees —
the core Trump
demographic — who
did not vote in
Pennsylvania, as well
as 2.2 million in
Florida.
The trend might
also reflect the
Democrats’ decision
to take their
campaigning virtual
during the thick of
the pandemic. Mr
Trump’s rallies, but
also his party’scanvassing, are a
crucial part of helping
people to register to
vote. Democratic
activists were
frustrated by the
decision, recently
reversed, to stop
going door to door.
There are reasons
to be cautious,
though. Part of this
trend is older
conservatives who
had registered as
Democrats but are
finally switching their
formal allegiance.
And younger voters
registering for the
first time
disproportionately
oppose Mr Trump and
disproportionately
choose not to register
as a supporter of
either party.
Ultimately the polls
remain rosy for Mr
Biden. “Would I
rather be a Democrat
with a four-point
Florida polling lead
heading into the final
20 days, or a
[Republican] president
with a favourable
recent Florida voter
registration trend?”
Dave Wasserman, an
elections analyst, said.
“I’d rather be the
Democrat.”A Cuban-American Trump supporter
turned up to vote early because he did
not trust the post. A black business own-
er backing Joe Biden was there because
he fears violence on election day.
Twenty miles away, in another queue
to cast early votes, a white Trump sup-
porter was concerned about conflict.
Another voter said he was convinced of
“ballot harvesting” by “liberal fascists”.
Welcome to Georgia, a state on the
front line of the election battle where
voters sharing a deep mistrust of the
system are waiting for up to eight hours
to cast their early ballots, and in record-
breaking numbers.
The polls show a neck-and-neck race
in a state where Mr Trump had a clear
five-point win in 2016.
In Cobb county, a prosperous part of
northwestern Atlanta, the rush to vote
is building. “There’s some scepticism asFear and distrust stalk
President Trump played to the crowd at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, this
far as the mail — will it get to the right
place? So I figure if I come here I can
personally put it in the box so I know it
will be counted,” Art Ordoqui, 71, the
Cuban-born Trump supporter, said.
Annette Copeland, 79, a black
woman, said she would stand in line for
hours if necessary to cast her vote for
Mr Biden. “Whatever it takes. People
had to die for black people to be able to
vote. My forebears, they couldn’t vote.
They were brought up in a plantation,
on a white man’s land.”
Rashawn Wilkinson, 43, a black man
who owns a trucking company, said he
feared the worst on November 3. “I
think the dog whistle has been blown
from the top down, and I believe there
are organised groups who are prepared
to commit violence. I’ve been to the in-
auguration of Bush and Obama and I
never had any fears like that. Things
have definitely changed in America.”
He was referring to white militiaDavid Charter Atlanta
Senior Republicans have broken ranks
to warn of a Democratic “blue tsunami”
on election day after President Trump
failed to make a breakthrough in a tele-
vised primetime showdown.
Mr Trump, 74, spent much of the
“town hall” interview in Miami defend-
ing his record, even as his challenger set
out a range of policies on another TV
channel but again failed to answer a key
question on adding judges to the
Supreme Court.
Early figures suggested that Joe
Biden had won the ratings battle after
an event symbolic of America’s partisan
divide. The two men broadcast simulta-
neously on Thursday night from 1,000
miles apart rather than debate face to
face after Mr Trump pulled out of a
video contest.
The president again failed to score a
win in a primetime showdown as he
refused to reject a sinister online
conspiracy theory but instead talked up
his “amazing job” in tackling the coro-
navirus. The US was approaching eight
million cases yesterday, with more than
60,000 new infections on Thursday, a
level not seen since early August.
Mr Trump’s defence of his handling
of the crisis was undermined by Chris
Christie, a close ally who had helped to
prepare him for his first debate with Mr
Biden: he said that he regretted letting
his guard down and catching Covid-19
at the White House, where mask-wear-
ing was not encouraged.
Mr Biden, 77, interviewed in Philadel-
phia, was pressed on his refusal to rule
out “packing” the Supreme Court by
adding seats to counter Mr Trump’s
conservative appointments. He said
only that he would give a definitive
answer before election day on Novem-
ber 3, once he saw how the Republicans
handled the latest judge in the Senate.
Asked if Americans would be required
to take a coronavirus vaccine, he said
that that “depends on the nature of the
vaccine”.
Mr Trump clashed with the modera-
tor, Savannah Guthrie, about QAnon,
the wide-ranging conspiracy theory
that he is protecting the world from a
child-trafficking cult whose members
include Democratic Party leaders and
celebrities. Asked to “once and for all
state that it is completely not true
and disavow QAnon in its entirety”,
Mr Trump responded: “I know
nothing about QAnon.”
He was forced to defend
not releasing his tax re-
turns and refused to say to
whom he owed $400 million, insisting
that this amount was “a peanut” in the
real estate world. He said that none of
the money was owed to Russian banks,
adding, “it’s leveraged with normal
banks. Not a big deal”.
He was silent on the scathing criti-
cism he has suffered from Ben Sasse, a
Republican senator fighting for re-elec-
tion in Nebraska. In a telephone cam-
paign event with supporters Mr Sasse
said: “We are staring down the barrel of
a blue tsunami. I’m now looking at the
possibility of a Republican bloodbath in
the Senate, and that’s why I’ve never
been on the Trump train.”
The Washington Post reported
yesterday that Mr Trump was
warned last year that information
Rudy Giuliani, his personal law-
yer, might find about Mr Biden
and his family would be “con-
taminated” by Russia. The
report referred to the hotly
disputed story passed to the
New York Post this week
about the business dealings
of Hunter Biden, Mr Biden’sJoe Biden was
adjudged the victor in
the “town hall” verbal
showdown with
President Trump