By Agence France-Presse
President Donald Trump relaunched his election campaign Sunday with a live television event inside the iconic Lincoln Memorial, promising an early coronavirus vaccine and urging Americans to put the pandemic behind them to embrace an "incredible" future.
US President Donald Trump went to the Lincoln Memorial to relaunch his campaign and call for an end to the pandemic lockdown (AFP / JIM WATSON / MANILA BULLETIN)
With the two-hour long Fox News "town hall," Trump sought to wrap himself in the mantle of America's arguably greatest president -- and to persuade a nation battered by death and mass unemployment to look ahead.
"We can't stay closed as a country, we're not going to have a country left," he said on the show, where two moderators, as well as ordinary citizens via video, put questions to him in front of the monument.
"We're going to have an incredible following year," he said.
To a woman who called in expressing fear of financial ruin and eviction, Trump said her job would come back.
"You get a job where you make more money," he said.
Saying Americans should start going back to beaches this summer and recommending that shuttered schools need to reopen in September, Trump forecast good news on the hunt for a vaccine.
"We are very confident that we're going to have a vaccine... by the end of the year," he said, admitting he was getting ahead of his own advisors with the prediction. "I'll say what I think," he said.