White House rally: Trump holds first public event since Covid diagnosis

Donald Trump has delivered a speech in front of cheering supporters at the White House in his first public appearance since being hospitalised.

The event was officially a “peaceful protest”, but looked, critics said, much like a Trump campaign rally.

The president, who says he is no longer taking medicines against Covid-19, told the crowd he was “feeling great”.

The White House has not provided an update on the president’s health since Thursday.

It is unclear whether the president remains contagious following his three-day hospital stay with Covid-19.

His rival in next month’s presidential election, Joe Biden, has been campaigning in Pennsylvania. He said his “heart goes out” to all those families who have lost someone they love to coronavirus.

Polling suggests Mr Biden has a single-digit lead over Mr Trump and an ABC News/Ipsos poll found that just 35% of Americans approved of how Mr Trump has handled the coronavirus crisis.

More than 210,000 Americans are known to have died of Covid-19.

Saturday’s White House gathering was partly organised by a foundation called “Blexit”, which aims to get black and Latino voters to support the Republican party.

The president, who took off his mask when he started to speak, railed against Mr Biden, describing the Democrat’s programme as “beyond socialism – Communist, that’s about right”. Mr Biden is generally considered to be a moderate Democrat.

Mr Trump repeated his previous assertion that he had done more for the black community than any president since Abraham Lincoln – a claim the BBC has previously fact-checked.

While this was not an official campaign event, he touched on many of his key talking points, like the economy, the border wall and postal voting.

The president also claimed, falsely, that his planned wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico would soon be finished.

Mr Trump said that the coronavirus was “disappearing”. Shortly before he made his speech, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 58,302 new cases in the past 24 hours. (BBC)