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| - Pummeled from all sides, US President Donald Trump appears increasingly desperate to turn the page on the unrelenting coronavirus pandemic eating away at his prospects for re-election in November. "Great News on Vaccines!" he tweeted Wednesday, striking a hopeful note. But the reality is stubborn and sobering: 136,000 Americans have perished, confirmed new cases are on the rise in 40 out of 50 states, and California announced Tuesday it was re-shuttering parts of its massive economy. With infection rates that have taken radically different trajectories than those in Europe, the United States is in bad shape -- and the president appears to be dodging the subject as much as possible. On Tuesday, at a hastily organized press conference where he denounced China but also vilified his Democratic rival Joe Biden, Trump barely mentioned the government's efforts to stem the COVID-19 outbreaks. On Wednesday, he travels to Atlanta -- not to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency helping formulate pandemic response, but to deliver a speech on modernizing America's infrastructure. His attempt to discredit respected infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci, who has bluntly warned that the US strategy against the virus is faltering, has flopped. Even some voices within his own camp are urging the president to tackle the problem more seriously rather than blame scapegoats. "We don't have a Dr Fauci problem," thundered Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a usually reliable Trump's reliable loyalists in Congress. "I have all the respect in the world for Dr Fauci," Graham added. "I think any effort to undermine him is not going to be productive." The White House has sought to calm the waters, even as one of its own sowed new confusion. In an opinion piece Tuesday in USA Today, Trump's chief trade advisor Peter Navarro attacked Fauci with renewed animosity. "When you ask me whether I listen to his advice, my answer is only with skepticism and caution," Navarro wrote. In a rare move, White House communications director Alyssa Farah promptly disavowed the advisor, tweeting that his column "didn't go through normal White House clearance processes and is the opinion of Peter alone." Amid the hubbub, Barack Obama weighed in with an appeal for action without the politics. "The latest data offers a tragic reminder that the virus doesn't care about spin or ideology," the 44th president tweeted Wednesday without naming the 45th, but clearly referring to Trump. "The best thing we can do for our economy is to deal with our public health crisis," Obama added. Biden, for eight years Obama's deputy, appears content to run a minimal campaign with few public appearances, but he nevertheless has sought to seize the momentum from a flailing Trump. Enjoying favorable polling, including in some traditionally Republican states, Biden denounced Trump for his "complete and utter failure" to combat COVID-19, as he shifts his own electoral strategy. On Tuesday, Biden aired his first campaign ad in Texas, a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1976 but where polls now put him in a dead heat with Trump. "I know the rise in (coronavirus) case numbers is causing fear and apprehension," Biden says over images of masked emergency responders, and loved ones communicating via webcast or through glass. "If you're sick, if you're struggling ... I will not abandon you." There is palpable concern in the Republican camp. Biden leads Trump by nine percentage points in national polling, according to an aggregate compiled by RealClearPolitics. The Democratic challenger, 77, is also ahead in at least five of the major swing states that could decide the election: Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump for his part is sticking to a limited line of attack: portraying his opponent as a listless old man easily manipulated by the "radical left." But the 74-year-old Trump committed his own slip of the tongue Tuesday when he said Biden had been pulled to "the right" by Bernie Sanders, the leftist who fought him for the Democratic nomination. jca-mlm/jm
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