Here’s what to watch during the final two weeks of the Trump-Biden campaign

The most dramatic moments in a campaign often come in the final weeks before an election, but good luck trying to spot them in advance.

“There is always an October surprise and it at times can be needle-moving, but there’s really no way to plan for it, because it’s just that, it’s a surprise,” Campbell said.

In October 2016, there were plenty. Trump’s campaign was rocked, and largely written off, after audio surfaced of him in 2005 bragging about making sexual advances on women, saying “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”

But soon after, focus shifted to then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Then-FBI Director James Comey’s public remarks about the Democrat’s emails, delivered just a few days before the 2016 election, are arguably what cost her the presidency.

A New York Post report published last week, claiming to show “smoking gun” emails related to Biden and his son Hunter Biden is being treated as an October surprise by the Trump campaign and its surrogates.

The report, which cites Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his former top advisor, Steve Bannon, as sources, has been treated with skepticism by other news outlets. The Post alleges Hunter Biden attempted to set up a meeting between his father and a top executive at a Ukrainian company he worked for while Joe Biden was vice president.

It’s unclear whether the Post’s report will have a noticeable impact on the race, though the Post has also claimed polls are narrowing in the wake of its exclusive.

The president and his supporters have railed against the decisions by Facebook and Twitter to limit distribution of the story on their platforms, accusing the tech giants of politically motivated censorship.

Biden’s son was at the center of Trump’s impeachment fight, which revolved in large part around a phone call in which Trump asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to “look into” the Bidens. Trump was impeached in the House and acquitted in the Senate.

Another possible October surprise may have already come and gone: the president’s Covid-19 infection.

Trump revealed on Oct. 2 that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus. He flew to Walter Reed Military Medical Center that same day, and was discharged three days later.

“I tend to think that the president getting coronavirus was a pretty good surprise,” Campbell said, adding that Trump’s apparent recovery from the virus might work in his favor.

Trump has consistently downplayed the threat of the virus and disregarded his own administration’s guidelines for social distancing and wearing protective equipment to avoid spreading the disease. At least 219,950 people in the U.S. have died from Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/20/trump-biden-election-what-to-watch-in-the-final-two-weeks.html