Donald Trump Iowa rally branded coronavirus 'superspreader event' by giant billboard

"We’re doing our part to warn Iowans that Donald Trump is in town"
A group of rural farmers erected the sign as a warning to Trump supporters
Getty Images
Imogen Braddick15 October 2020

A billboard directing people to the "Trump Covid superspreader event" was put up ahead of the president's rally in Iowa.

A group of Iowa farmers erected the billboard directly opposite Des Moines airport, where the rally was being held on Wednesday night.

Donald Trump swept into Iowa on a mission to shore up support in battleground states that he won in 2016, but is in danger of losing to Democrat Joe Biden barely three weeks before the election.

Iowa Rural America 2020 said it paid for the billboard as a "warning" to residents ahead of the rally.

"We’re doing our part to warn Iowans that @realdonaldtrump is in town tomorrow," the campaign group said on Twitter.

"This billboard is directly outside the Des Moines Airport where he will hold his hangar rally."

Steering committee member Chris Henning said everyone should "be worried about a President who was in the hospital with Covid last week and who now wants to pack thousands of Iowans into an airport hangar".

He said in a press release: "This is the height of irresponsibility. We saw what happened in the Rose Garden. Why should the President be allowed to bring that kind of superspreader behavior into Iowa, particularly when our cases are rising?"

Trump used his son's Covid-19 illness as a reason why schools should reopen
REUTERS

An airport spokeswoman told the Des Moines Register that local officials were told to expect "up to 10,000 people at the rally".

Lina Tucker Reinders, executive director of the Iowa Public Health Association, told the newspaper: "If anyone in attendance is infectious, we are potentially looking at another superspreader event.

"We again today set a record high for hospitalisations. We need to be focusing on bringing those numbers down and controlling the spread, not enabling large events, political or otherwise."

During the rally, Mr Trump cited what he said was his son's mild bout of the virus as a reason why American schools should reopen as soon as possible.

Thousands attended the rally at Des Moines airport
AP

Melania Trump made the revelation on Wednesday in a lengthy note chronicling her personal experience with Covid-19, including being hit with a "roller coaster" of symptoms that she treated naturally with vitamins and healthy food.

The US president, speaking at a campaign rally in Iowa, was cavalier about Barron's infection, saying: "He had it for such a short period of time, I don't even think he knew that he had it."

"Barron is just fine," Mr Trump added. "It happens. People have it and it goes. Get the kids back to school. We've got to get the kids back to school."

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