In New York, electric atmosphere between supporters of Biden and Trump before the debate

“Trump in 2020!

No more bullshit!

It is not in New York that one would expect to find such a poster, posed behind the window of a pretty house, close to the star-spangled banner and a Trump-Pence sign.

We are indeed in New York, but avenue des Huguenots, on Staten Island, the only district of the metropolis to have voted mainly for Trump in 2016… No one answers the door but a little lady approaches behind with his dog: “Trump is going to be re-elected.

Watch the debate on Tuesday, it's going to knock Biden out!

», She asserts.

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Across the bay in Manhattan, Victor Colletti, a yoga teacher, ends his outdoor class on Sunday by the Hudson River by urging his students to vote to take the Senate back from the Republicans.

Colletti, who describes himself as a militant "of the radical left", does not make in the nuance: "We live in a fascist police state, he asserts, and if Trump returns, it will be even worse".

"In 40 years, I have never seen such a divide"

A few hours before the first of three debates scheduled between Trump and Joe Biden, "Big Apple", whose five "boroughs" (neighborhoods) are home to more than 8 million inhabitants, has rarely been so divided.

Like a deeply polarized country.

In this Democratic stronghold, Trump has no chance of winning, but the hostility between supporters and supporters of the 45th president is such that dialogue has become almost impossible.

"I've lived in New York for 40 years, I've never seen such a divide," says Jeff Sult, a technician for a TV station who will vote for Biden.

In the time of George W. Bush (2000-2008) people argued but they still spoke to each other.

"And this former Marine has for the first time in his life put up a banner outside his home in Queens:" Veterans Affairs vs. Trump. "

Jeff Sult, a former Marine who will vote for Joe Biden, put up a banner outside his house that reads "Veterans vs. Trump. "/LP/Marc Chalamet  

The tension is also rising among the two septuagenarians who will face each other this Tuesday evening in Cleveland.

36 days before the election, the last three national polls all give Biden an 8-10 point lead.

"But it's like in 2016," notes Ryan Girdusky, a young executive at the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York.

The polls fail to count the vote of whites, ”continues the pro-Trump in a confident tone.

And in states where everything can be played out, the outgoing president rises.

For Girdusky, "in New York as in the rest of the country, it has become

to hate Trump and you have to be strong to resist this social pressure".

Democrats have forgotten, he says, that "Biden is a career politician who has always been for an economy favoring billionaires and big corporations, not America."

“The Bidon Billionaire?”

Nevertheless, in the Republican camp, we are worried.

First, has Trump set the bar too low for Joe Biden?

He's been making fun of "Sleeping Joe" since 2018, even before Democrats invested him in the White House race, and he hints that Biden no longer has all of his mental faculties.

One of his most prominent allies, Joe Murphy, an MP for North Carolina, even launched last month that Biden suffers from dementia ... Viewers who expect to see a near-senile Biden might be reassured to simply see him. line up three coherent sentences in a row ... So Trump has recently corrected things and said Biden is going to dope.

“I'm going to demand that he pass a doping control before or after the debate,” he tweeted on Sunday, adding: “Of course, I will take one too.

"

Another cause for concern in the Trump camp are the latest revelations from the New York Times on the president's tax returns.

He apparently only paid $ 750 in federal taxes altogether between 2001 and 2016. Worse, he would be riddled with debt, several hundred million dollars ... Trump vigorously denied the " scoop ”but the Drudge Report, a right-wing website that has long been an ally of the president, wonders with the headline:“ The Billionaire Bidon?

"

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VIDEO.

United States: Trump only paid $ 750 in taxes in 2016

On the Democrat side, many Biden supporters lament their champion's “apathy” and fear that he will too easily give way to a galvanized Trump.

In Florida, for example, one of the key states leading up to the November 3 election, the number of Republicans on the electoral roll in August was 40% higher than that of Democrats ... Another example, Trump replied five times more media questions than Biden in the past two months.

In New York, as elsewhere, Republicans and Democrats no longer communicate.

But in both camps, the enthusiasm for the debate is real.

"It's a bit as if politics had become a new way of identifying oneself, a kind of religion", analyzes Ryan Girdusky, who obviously will not miss a thing.

This Tuesday evening, the "city that never sleeps" could well look like a dead city ...

Even Colletti, the yoga teacher, will be in front of his small screen. “Yes, if I am not arrested by the cops beforehand, persuades the radical activist, because I continue to demonstrate every day for Black Lives Matter. “Don't panic, reply Biden's advisers, we are preparing the debate. Is this strategy the right one? We will know a little more in a few hours.