“You turn on CNN. That's all they cover: COVID, COVID, pandemic, COVID, COVID, COVID. They're trying to talk people out of voting. People aren’t buying it, CNN, you dumb bastards,” President Donald Trump railed at a recent campaign rally in Arizona.

Soon after, there was the Trump walkout from – and leaking of – an interview with CBS journalist Lesley Stahl on the network's 60 Minutes. It’s a flailing Trump's way of trying to get the election campaign back onto more favourable ground – wherever that is in a US poleaxed by the contagion.