President Trump, eager to prove he is healthy and energetic despite his recent hospitalisation for Covid-19, returned to the campaign trail on Monday night in Florida, speaking for just over an hour in a state that his advisers think he must win in November, but where voters were overwhelmingly repelled by his performance in the first general election debate.

Trump, whose voice sounded hoarse and strained as he began to speak onstage at a hangar at Orlando Sanford International Airport, claimed he was fully recovered and, therefore, immune to the coronavirus — a claim for which there is no conclusive scientific backing.

“I feel so powerful,” said the President, who did not wear a mask while boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews before leaving Washington. “I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women. Just give you a big fat kiss.”

Trump, whose response to a virus that has killed nearly 215,000 Americans remains the biggest threat to his re-election, claimed without any evidence that his Democratic rival, former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden Jr, would delay a vaccine and “prolong the pandemic”.

He made fun of the small and socially distanced campaign events that Biden has been hosting, and he commended his own campaign for the large crowds it has been turning out at rallies, calling them “the real polls”.

Trump arrived in Florida only hours after the White House physician, Dr Sean P. Conley, said that the President had tested negative “on consecutive days” using a rapid antigen coronavirus test not intended for that purpose. Experts cautioned that the test’s accuracy had not been investigated enough to be sure that the President was virus-free or, as his doctor claimed, “not infectious to others”.

In a previous note, Dr Conley had said that the President had a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test, which amplifies coronavirus genetic material and is more precise, but he did not release the specific results of that test.

Many rallygoers on Monday evening did not wear masks, including some of those chosen to stand behind the President’s podium and within the camera shot. And even as Trump claimed he was immune to the virus, White House officials travelling with him acknowledged the risk to those around him.

En route to Florida, Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, uncharacteristically wearing a mask, visited the press cabin on Air Force One to thank reporters for covering the event.

Onstage, Trump also mocked questions about whether he would agree to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost. He claimed, falsely, that President Barack Obama had spied on his 2016 campaign and noted, “We’ll take care of it after the election,” adding that it “gives you another reason to go out and vote”.

For the most part, however, the President was back to delivering his regular, factually challenged campaign stump speech, in which he brags about killing terrorists and building a wall, and accuses the news media of being “frauds”.

On Monday night, he boasted about being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he blamed the news media for not giving him enough credit for a nomination while news outlets had covered Obama being awarded the prize in 2009.

New York Times News Service