What does the COVID-19 outbreak mean for Trump’s administration?
Waleed Shahid, communications director at Justice Democrats, talks about the pandemic’s impact on the upcoming US vote.
Some three weeks before its highly anticipated presidential elections, the United States remains the worst-affected country by the coronavirus pandemic.
“The fact that [we’re facing COVID-19], the biggest crisis in the world, and the president himself cannot seem to handle it doesn’t inspire much confidence that he should be the president of the US anymore,” Waleed Shahid, communications director at Justice Democrats, said in an interview with Al Jazeera’s new digital show We Need To Talk with Malika Bilal.
Justice Democrats is an organisation that recruits and supports progressive Democratic candidates for the US Congress. Previously, Shahid worked with the campaign of Bernie Sanders, who lost the party’s nomination to Joe Biden.
“Biden may not have been the progressive choice in the Democratic primary, but he is running on the most progressive platform in the modern history of the Democratic party,” Shahid said.
He also spoke about the gap between Democratic progressives and moderates, and the future of democracy in the US.
“I think that President [Donald] Trump is an authoritarian,” Shahid said when asked about the Republican leader’s intentions to potentially challenge the outcome of the November 3 vote.
We Need To Talk is Al Jazeera Digital’s flagship interview show that engages newsmakers, politicians, scholars and activists in conversation about issues at the core of the upcoming 2020 US elections. Bilal is an award-winning journalist who has interviewed heads of state and other global leaders.