TAMPA, Fla. — President Donald Trump took a Friday swing through Florida, a state critical to his reelection prospects and bracketed by two storms — one now bringing daily records on COVID-19 deaths and the other swirling just to the south in the form of Hurricane Isaias. Speaking soon after a federal appeals court threw out Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's death sentence for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing because of potential juror bias, Trump attacked Democratic rival Joe Biden for his shifting position on capital punishment. The former vice president, who supported the death penalty through much of his long political career, last year called for eliminating the death penalty on the federal level and incentivizing states to do the same. “They protect criminals and Biden opposes the death penalty, even for cop killers and child murderers," Trump told hundreds of supporters who showed up to hear him speak at the sheriffs' event on the Tampa International Airport tarmac. “I see in Boston, where you have the animal that killed so many people during the Boston Marathon, they just sent this conviction for the death penalty back to the lower courts.

Source: International New York Times July 31, 2020 18:51 UTC