Trump holds entirely indoor rally, drawing rebuke for ignoring virus risks

Trump held his campaign rally at an indoor venue on Sunday where people in the crowd were seated close together and many did not wear masks.

His last indoor rally was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after which the city saw an increase in the number of cases, with several campaign staffers along with Secret Service agents testing positive for the virus.

The Republican president railed against his Democratic rival Joe Biden, suggesting he was taking drugs and was soft on crime.

“Biden wants to appease domestic terrorists and my plan is to arrest domestic terrorists,” Trump said. “If Biden wins, the mob wins.”

Meanwhile, Biden has attacked Trump for holding campaign events that put people at risk of getting infected with the virus, which has so far killed over 194,000 people in the US.

The president has been under harsh criticism for publicly playing down the infectious disease in the early months of 2020 and trying to rapidly re-open the economy after a lockdown in the spring.

Meanwhile, his reelection campaign’s spokesman Tim Murtaugh said, “If you can join tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, gamble in a casino, or burn down small businesses in riots, you can gather peacefully under the First Amendment to hear from the president of the United States.”

On Saturday night, when the campaign rally began, Trump talked about staying in office 12 years although there are constitutional limits that prohibit US presidents from serving more than two, four-year terms.

“We are going to win four more years in the White House and then after that we’ll negotiate, right, because we’re probably, based on the way we were treated, we’re probably entitled to another four after that,” he said.