Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump will visit a Ford factory in the important electoral state of Michigan on Thursday to tout what he says is his success in fighting the coronavirus, the White House said.
Trump is in full campaign mode and his latest trip away from Washington, after weeks of lockdown, will highlight his claim of strong leadership in a state crucial to his chances of winning reelection in November.
The president will tour the Ford Motor Company’s Rawsonville manufacturing plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which has been repurposed to build ventilators and other medical equipment during the pandemic.
He will make a speech on collaboration between Ford and General Electric. The choice of companies is doubly significant because they symbolize the industrial engine that Trump is pushing to get restarted after the coronavirus economic shutdown.
Despite widespread accusations of erratic and sometimes incompetent federal management during the crisis, Trump responds that he has performed flawlessly. The emergency production of hospital ventilators, used for serious COVID-19 cases, is one of his chief talking points.
"Because of the president’s leadership and the unprecedented collaboration between these companies and the federal government, nobody in the country that has needed a ventilator has gone without one," a White House official said.
"As President Trump has said, we are the king of ventilators and it’s because of these partnerships that American lives have been saved."
