FAYETTEVILLE, USA: President Donald Trump entered his final day of campaigning for reelection Monday by dismissing polls that show him headed for a humiliating loss, while Democrat Joe Biden urged Americans to draw a line under the “chaos” of the last four years.
“I watch these fake polls,” Trump, 74, told a crowd in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on the eve of Election Day. “We’re going to win anyway.”
The Republican’s gripe at pollsters — combined with angry swipes at everybody from journalists, social media CEOs, his defeated 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton and Democratic opponents in Congress — reflected the bitter mood as he faces the possibility of being removed from the White House after one term.
When he wasn’t complaining about his “crooked” opponents, Trump focused back on his months-long attempts to paint Biden as “sleepy” and “corrupt,” leading the crowd to chant: “Lock him up!“
And Trump sought to recapture the spirit of his shock win four years ago by casting himself as the rebel against an “arrogant, corrupt, ruthless” establishment.
“You elected an outsider as president who is finally putting America first,” he told the crowd. “Get out and vote, that’s all I ask.”
But Biden, who has built his campaign on casting Trump as a reckless failure during the coronavirus pandemic, scents victory.
Opinion polls give him small but steady advantages in all the swing states that tip close elections and even threatening Republican strongholds like Georgia and Texas.
“It’s time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home,” Biden, 77, told supporters in Cleveland, Ohio.
“We’re done with the chaos! We’re done with the tweets, the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility,” said Biden.
Tuesday is formally Election Day but in reality it marks the culmination of a drawn-out election month.
With a huge expansion in mail-in voting to safeguard against the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 95 million people are estimated to have already cast ballots, highlighting the raw passion in what is turning into a referendum on the norm-shattering Republican’s first term.
All over central Washington, businesses boarded up windows in expectation of unrest and NBC News reported that a new “unscalable” fence was planned around the White House, which has been behind growing layers of fortifications since a summer of anti-racism protests.
While the Trump administration warned of left-wing extremists causing havoc, the president’s supporters made their own show of force, driving in caravans of flag-bedecked pick-up trucks and blocking roads around the country.
The FBI said it was investigating an incident in Texas where Trump supporters in trucks swarmed around a Biden campaign bus while it was on a highway.
Biden was closing up his startlingly low key campaign with socially distanced events in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the fiercest battleground of them all.
Pop superstar Lady Gaga was to join the 77-year-old, while former president Barack Obama was lending his own political star power by rallying for Biden in Florida and Georgia — a steady Republican state targeted by the Democrats.
Trump, who mocks Biden’s modestly attended events as proof that the opinion polls must be wrong, was capping his closing surge of 14 rallies in three days with visits to North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
The last rally will be in Grand Rapids — the site where Trump delivered the final speech of his victorious 2016 campaign and where he hopes he will once more spark an upset.
The president, who for months has been falsely claiming that mail-in votes will lead to mass fraud, upped the ante in the final days by suggesting that he will push to disqualify votes that arrive after Tuesday — a practice which is in fact legal in several of the key states, provided that the ballots are postmarked in time.
Together with Republican attempts to get a court to throw out more than 100,000 ballots in Texas and other aggressive legal measures, Trump’s hostility to the election rules is raising fears that he will try to declare premature victory or refuse to accept defeat.
The Axios news site reported Sunday that Trump has told confidants he will declare victory right away if it looked like he was ahead.
Trump called it a “false report” but repeated his argument that “I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for a long period of time after the election.”
Trump dismisses ‘fake’ polls, Biden says time to end the ‘chaos’
https://arab.news/gkdzb
Trump dismisses ‘fake’ polls, Biden says time to end the ‘chaos’
- Opinion polls give Biden small but steady advantages in all the swing states
- US surpasses 95 million early ballots on eve of Election Day
Switzerland mourns Crans-Montana fire tragedy
- All of Switzerland will mark a national day of mourning Friday for the dozens of mostly teenagers killed when fire ravaged a ski resort bar crammed with New Year revellers
CRANS MONTANA: All of Switzerland will mark a national day of mourning Friday for the dozens of mostly teenagers killed when fire ravaged a ski resort bar crammed with New Year revellers.
Just over a week after the tragedy at the Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, which left 40 dead and 116 injured, the wealthy Alpine nation will come to a standstill for a minute of silence at 2:00 p.m. (1300 GMT).
A chorus of church bells will then ring throughout the country.
The moment of silence will stand as a “testament to the shared grief felt by the entire nation with all the families and friends directly affected,” the Swiss government said in a statement.
At the same time, a memorial ceremony for the victims will be held in Martigny, a town about 50 kilometers (31 miles) down the valley from Crans-Montana, which had been rendered all but inaccessible by a large snowstorm.
Inhabitants of the plush ski resort town will meanwhile be able to watch the ceremony as it is livestreamed to large screens, including at the congress center that for days after the tragedy accommodated families seeking news of missing loved ones.
Among ‘worst tragedies’
A memorial that has sprung up in front of the bar, loaded with flowers, candles and messages of grief and support, was covered in an igloo-like tarp Thursday to protect it from the heavy snowfall.
Swiss President Guy Parmelin, who has declared the fire “one of the worst tragedies that our country has experienced,” will be joined for the ceremony by his French and Italian counterparts, whose countries lost nine and six nationals respectively in the fire.
Top officials from Belgium, Luxembourg, Serbia and the European Union were also due to participate in the ceremony.
Most of those impacted by the inferno at Le Constellation were Swiss, but a total of 19 nationalities were among the fatalities and the wounded.
Half of those killed in the blaze were under 18, including some as young as 14.
Of those injured, 83 remain in hospital, with the most severely burned airlifted to specialist centers across Switzerland and abroad.
Prosecutors believe the blaze started when champagne bottles with sparklers attached were raised too close to sound insulation foam on the ceiling in the bar’s basement section.
Experts have suggested that what appeared to be highly flammable foam may have caused a so-called flashover — a near-simultaneous ignition of everything in an enclosed space, trapping many of the young patrons.
Video footage which has emerged from the tragedy shows young people desperately trying to flee the scene, some breaking windows to try to force their way out.
On Tuesday, municipal authorities acknowledged that no fire safety inspections had been conducted at Le Constellation since 2019, prompting outrage.
‘Staggering’
The investigation underway will seek to shed light on the responsibilities of the authorities, but also of bar owners Jacques and Jessica Moretti.
The French couple, facing charges of manslaughter by negligence, bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence, have been called in for questioning on Friday, sources close to the investigation told AFP.
The pair, who have not been detained, said in a statement Tuesday that they were “devastated and overwhelmed with grief,” and pledged their “full cooperation” with investigators.
They will need to answer numerous questions about why so many minors were in the bar, and whether fire safety standards were adhered to.
There has been much focus on the soundproofing foam, which, according to photos taken by the owners, had been added during renovations in 2015.
A video filmed by a member of the public, screened Monday by Swiss broadcaster RTS, showed that the danger was known years ago.
“Watch out for the foam!,” a bar employee said during 2019 New Year’s Eve celebrations, as champagne bottles with sparklers were brought out.
“This video is staggering,” Romain Jordan, a lawyer representing several affected families, told AFP, saying it showed “there was an awareness of this risk — and that possibly this risk was accepted.”
