New York Post, Sunday, October 25, 2020
nypost.com
ELECTION 2020
President Trump and former
Vice President Joe Biden traded
attacks at their rallies on the cam-
paign trail Saturday.
As Trump hopscotched through
three battleground states —
North Carolina, Ohio and Wis-
consin — Biden trained his fire
on Pennsylvania, which he aims
to take back for the Democrats
after Trump’s surprise 2016 win
there.
But at two drive-in rallies in the
critical swing counties of Bucks
and Luzerne, Biden was met with
scores of Trump fans who lined
the roadways with campaign flags
and shouts of “Go home, Joe!”
“We don’t do things like those
chumps out there with the micro-
phones, those Trump guys,” an ir-
ritated Biden told his supporters
at Bucks County Community Col-
lege — all of them ensconced in-
side about 130 cars to prevent the
spread of coronavirus.
Trump, at a non-socially-dis-
tanced rally in Lumberton, NC,
ridiculed his rival’s “tiny little
crowds.”
“There were so few cars, I’ve
never seen an audience like this,”
Trump said. “You just heard a
couple of horns going ‘honk
honk.’ It’s the weirdest thing.”
Biden defended his limited-ca-
pacity events.
“I don’t like the idea of all this
distance, but it’s necessary,” he
told the Bucks County crowd.
“We don’t want to become super-
spreaders.” Mary Kay LingeA Saturday
of drive-by
slapdowns
Former Obama White House ad-
viser Van Jones came to President
Trump’s defense Friday, saying the
brash billionaire did “good stuff for
the back community,” and didn’t
get the credit he deserved for his
work on criminal justice reform.
“Donald Trump — and I get
beat up by liberals every time I
say this, but I’m gonna keep say-
ing it — he has done good stuff
for the black community,” Jones
said on CNN, where he is a fre-
quent contributor. “Opportunity
zone stuff, black college stuff. I
worked with him on criminal jus-
tice stuff. I saw Donald Trump
have African American people,
formerly incarcerated, in the
White House.” Jon LevineBam’s man
lauds DJT
NYers voTINg wITh ThEIr fEET
President Trump is one vote closer to victory
in the all-important battleground state of Florida
— after casting his own ballot there Saturday.
The president, who changed
his official address from New
York to the Sunshine State
last year, took advantage of
Florida’s early-voting law to
mark his ballot in person at
the Main Library in West
Palm Beach. He spent Friday
night at his nearby Mar-a-
Lago resort after spending the
day on the campaign trail in his new home state.
“I voted for a guy named Trump,” he told re-
porters.“But it’s an honor to be voting,” he said. “It
was a very secure vote, much more secure than
when you send in a ballot, I can tell you.”
A small crowd of support-
ers was there to greet him,
waving Trump campaign ban-
ners and American flags.
Florida and its 29 Electoral
College votes is a must-win
for Trump, who took it by a
single percentage point in
2016.
Polls show Democrat Joe
Biden with a slim — though narrowing —
1.5-percentage-point lead in Florida, according
to RealClearPolitics. Mary Kay LingeEarly-bird Don: I pick me!
By Melissa KleiN,
KhRistiNa NaRizhNaya
and GeoRGett RoBeRtsNearly 94,000 New Yorkers
flocked to the polls Saturday for
the first-ever start of early vot-
ing in a presidential race, willing
to wait hours to cast ballots in
one of the most contentious
campaigns ever.
More than 400 voters were
queued up outside Madison
Square Garden an hour before
doors opened at 10 a.m. By mid-
afternoon, the NYPD said 5,
people were on line.
Blocks-long lines were re-
ported outside the Barclays Cen-
ter and in Williamsburg in
Brooklyn, and in Harlem, as well
as the Queens neighborhoods of
Astoria and Bayside.
New York, which began offer-
ing early voting only last year, is
among the last states to start the
process for this election. Mary-
land will begin early voting
Monday and the District of
Columbia Tuesday.
In Brooklyn, 29,411 people
voted; in Manhattan, 19,877;
Queens, 19,223; The Bronx,
14,927 and Staten Island, 10,391.
With 10 days to go before Elec-
tion Day, more than 57 million
Americans have voted, either in
person or by mail, the US Elec-
tion Project reported late Satur-
day. That’s more than all of
those who voted early in 2016
In Florida, more than 5.2 mil-
lion people have voted already, a
number that exceeds the 4.
million who voted for President
Trump in 2016, according to a
Newsweek report.
Many New Yorkers said they
were voting early because they
feared fraud or didn’t trust the
post office to handle absentee
ballots.
Actor Timothée Chalamet was
among the throngs at the Gar-
den, emerging shortly before
4 p.m. wearing a baseball cap
and a blue mask.
“I’m here because I’m trying to
take part, like everybody else, in
saving this democracy,” he said
after posing for photos with
fans. “Everybody vote! Every-
body vote!”
Brooklyn resident Lindsey
Grossman, 35, said she clearedBRONX QUEENSJames KeivomMANHATTANSTATEN ISLANDAFP via Getty ImagesJ.C. RiceBrigitte StelzerStephen Yang