Biden vows unity can 'save this country'; Trump hits Midwest

WARM SPRINGS, Ga (AP) — Joe Biden traveled to the hot springs town where Franklin Delano Roosevelt coped with polio on Tuesday to declare the U.S. is not too politically diseased to overcome its health and economic crises, pledging to be the unifying force who can "restore our soul and save this country.”

The Democratic presidential nominee offered his closing argument with Election Day just one week away while attempting to go on the political offensive in Georgia, which hasn't backed a Democrat for the White House since 1992. He has for months promised to be a president for all Americans regardless of party, even as "anger and suspicion is growing and our wounds are getting deeper.”

“Has the heart of this nation turned to stone? I don’t think so,” Biden said. “I refuse to believe it.”

While Biden worked to expand the electoral map in the South, President Donald Trump focused on the Democrats’ “blue wall” states that he flipped in 2016 — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and maintained a far busier travel schedule taking him to much more of the country.

In Lansing, Michigan's capital city, Trump talked up the economy, which he noted was humming before the pandemic hit. He said, "This election is a matter of economic survival for Michigan. Look what I’ve done.”

Even as Biden argued that the country could rise above politics, he went after his election rival, accusing Trump anew of bungling the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic that has seen new cases surging in many areas, and failing to manage the economic fallout or combat institutional racism and police brutality that have sparked widespread demonstrations.

“The tragic truth of our time is that COVID has left a deep and lasting wound in this country,” Biden said, scoffing at Trump's pronouncements that the nation...