China is desperate to remove me from power, Donald Trump claims
Donald Trump has claimed that China ‘will do anything they can’ to prevent him holding onto the White House.
President Donald Trump has claimed that China “will do anything they can” to prevent him holding onto the White House, amid signs of his growing frustration at the success in the polls of his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
At the end of a tumultuous week said to have included a row with his campaign manager over softening approval ratings and re-election numbers, Mr Trump suggested in an interview that he was planning retaliation against Beijing.
With six months to go before the presidential election, China is a focal point of both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. Mr Trump is keen to portray Mr Biden as weak, while lumping all the blame for American coronavirus deaths on to Beijing to divert from allegations that he failed to protect the public. The Biden campaign, for its part, has produced TV adverts showing how Mr Trump accepted Beijing’s assurances early in the crisis and repeatedly extolled the leadership of President Xi Jinping.
State polling on Friday continued to show favourable figures for Mr Biden, 77, the presumptive Democratic nominee, with Texas the latest traditional Republican stronghold in which he has taken a narrow head-to-head lead over Mr Trump, 73.
It followed similar results in other states that were won by Mr Trump in 2016, including Florida and Ohio. Mr Biden was given eight-point leads in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. The poll in Texas, where Mr Trump won in 2016 by nine points, gave Mr Biden 47 per cent support with Mr Trump on 46 per cent .
“China will do anything they can to have me lose this race,” Mr Trump told Reuters, referring to the public relations battle raging over who is to blame for the coronavirus pandemic which has crashed the US economy.
“They’re constantly using public relations to try to make it like they’re innocent parties,” he added. “We were rocking before this happened. We had the greatest economy in history.”
Asked if he was considering the use of new trade tariffs, or writing off US debt obligations to Beijing, Mr Trump said: “There are many things I can do. We’re looking for what happened.”
He threatened earlier in the week to seek billions of dollars in damages from China.
The President is said to have erupted in anger at Brad Parscale, his campaign manager, in a phone call last Friday when they were discussing negative polling data presented to him earlier. He was widely ridiculed last week for suggesting that disinfectant might be able to “knock out” the coronavirus if it were injected into a sufferer.
Mr Trump denied on Friday that he and Mr Parscale had exchanged harsh words. He tweeted: “Just told that Fake News @CNN is falsely reporting that I was recently shouting at my campaign manager over made up nonsense. Actually, he is doing a great job, I never shouted at him (been with me for years, including the 2016 win), & have no intention to do so. Just FAKE NEWS!”
He followed up with a swipe at the latest polling: “FAKE POLLING, just like 2016 (but worse)!”
Mr Trump’s re-election campaign team will launch Facebook and YouTube adverts this weekend aimed at swing voters in 17 states, featuring positive statements by Democrat state governors about the President’s handling of the health crisis. They include Andrew Cuomo in New York, who has earned high approval ratings while Mr Trump’s own numbers have slipped this month.
THE TIMES
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