The US election campaigns have entered a new phase, focusing on the elderly who in 2016 voted for Trump, but some of them now seem to favor the Democrats.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden - who is fighting furiously for the vote of the elderly in Florida - returned to the state on Tuesday, telling a crowd of seniors that President Donald Trump considered them a "burden" and "forgettable."
Biden's visit to the conflict-raging state came a day after the Republican Trump visited her, in his first event outside Washington since he was diagnosed with Covid-19.
Biden - who was speaking in front of about 50 people at a community center in Broward County in South Florida - said that Trump recklessly rejected the threat the virus posed to the threatened population.
Biden said, "For Donald Trump, you are a burden, you can be forgotten, you are in fact no one ... this is how the elderly see, this is how they see you."
Biden's beating Trump in Florida would severely damage the president's chances of winning a second term.
Most recent polls show the Democratic candidate's progress among the major population groups in the state, particularly the elderly.
Trump won that state in the 2016 election by 1.2 percentage points.
Early vote
Early voting before Election Day on November 3 broke records across the United States, with more than 11.8 million voters casting their ballots so far, including more than 1.6 million in Florida, according to University of Florida Election Project data.
Biden, 77, accused Trump, 74, of wanting to curtail the Social Security benefits program for retirees, an accusation the Trump campaign denied again on Tuesday, saying Biden was trying to "scare the elderly for political reasons."
Biden later began a car rally in Miramar, Florida, and dozens of marching cars blew horns as Biden spoke.
Trump had returned to the election campaign on Monday night in Florida for the first time since his infection with the Coronavirus was revealed, by throwing protective masks at his supporters while he himself did not put a muzzle when he was talking about his recovery.
"I recovered from him now. They say I am immune, and I feel very strong," Trump told thousands of his supporters, who were standing close together, most of them not wearing masks.
The conference came hours after the White House announced that the results of Trump's tests for Corona virus were negative, and that it was not contagious to others.
Biden is critical of the Trump administration for the pandemic.
Trump has worked for months to divert public attention away from the Corona virus, which has infected more than 7.8 million, killed more than 214,000, and pushed millions out of work in the United States.
Polls
A Reuters / Ipsos poll showed - Tuesday - that Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden has maintained a marked lead over President Donald Trump in Michigan, but the competition between the two is very close in North Carolina.
Reuters / Ipsos polled potential voters in six states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona, which will play a pivotal role in determining whether Trump will win a second term or Biden reach the White House.
During the poll, which was conducted from October 7 to 13, Biden's approval rating was 51% compared to 43% for Trump, similar results to what was the case last week.
A recent NBC and Wall Street Journal poll showed that Biden was ahead of Trump in voting intentions for the elderly by 27 points, 62 percent against 35 percent, while a CNN poll gave him with "SSRs." They are 21 points ahead of this segment.
Florida Atlantic University published a poll of the views of potential voters in the state, which showed that Biden had 51% of voting intentions, compared to 47% for Trump.
Biden mistakes
Trump mocked, once again, the former vice president, whom he dubbed "sleepy atmosphere," stressing that he does not attract "almost anyone."
"Today was particularly bad for the sleepy atmosphere," Trump wrote in a tweet on Monday evening.
Trump was referring to two mistakes that Biden made: The first was that he forgot the name of Senator Mitt Romney when he spoke about "the Senator who was in the Mormons (a religious group), and who was the governor of Massachusetts."
And the second when Biden - who has been a senator for more than 35 years - declared that he was a "proud Democrat candidate for the Senate", before he went back and said "a candidate for the presidency."
Trump said in a tweet, "If I do these two things, I'm being left out."
Mitt Romney, who was a candidate in the 2012 elections, issued a harsh criticism of the president on Tuesday, calling on the candidates to lower the "hateful, outrageous and hate-filled" tone that has become the focus of political discourse in the country.
Twitter freezes fake Trump pro-Trump accounts
Twitter announced Tuesday that it has frozen several fake accounts that pretend to be pro-Trump African Americans, which have managed to attract thousands of subscribers within a few days.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco-based group said, "Our teams are working relentlessly to investigate this activity and will take action according to Twitter's rules about whether the tweets violate" those rules.
Darren Linville, a professor at Clemson University who specializes in misinformation on social media, posted examples of these fake accounts on his Twitter account.
One of these accounts, Ted Katia, posted on September 17 a tweet, saying "Yes, I'm black and I'm voting for Trump! Leftists won't like it but I don't care !!!"
This tweet received more than 16,000 likes, and was shared more than 6,000 times.
Twitter froze these accounts because they mislead users about their owners' intentions and identities, and thus undermine the integrity of the public debate.
In September, Twitter published a rule banning the use of the platform to "artificially amplify or conceal information, or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people's experiences on Twitter."
Facebook founder donates to the US elections
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced - yesterday, Tuesday - that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated an additional $ 100 million to help the election offices preparing for the US presidencies scheduled for next month.
The Associated Press reported that the recent donation raises Zuckerberg and Chan's total funding for the elections to $ 400 million, the same amount that Congress appropriated last March to help fund election offices facing difficulties adapting to the new voting method in light of the Corona pandemic.
Election experts estimated the election changes would cost $ 4 billion, but Senate Republicans took no action on a relief bill introduced by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives that included $ 3.6 billion to help voting officials.
The donations will be allocated for protective equipment to prevent the spread of Corona at polling sites, and equipment needed to process postal ballot papers, among others.