President looks to shore up support in the Heartland

Trump takes his campaign to Iowa, Biden focuses on online fundraising - NBC's Alice Barr reports

WASHINGTON, D.C. (KYMA, KECY/NBC News) - President Donald Trump started his day focused on the economy in online remarks to the economic clubs of several major cities.

"The choice facing America is simple, a choice between historic prosperity under my pro-American policies. or very crippling poverty and a steep depression under the radical left." said the President.

Trump was keen to shift attention to the economy, where his approval ratings remain high, as opposed to his low ratings on the pandemic.

Even as First Lady Melania Trump revealed Wednesday their teenage son, Barron, tested positive for the virus but showed no symptom. He has since tested negative, just like his parents.

Coronavirus cases are on the rise across the country, leading to fears of a second major wave of infections. The Midwest now the hardest hit part of the country.

Hospitalizations are spiking in Iowa, where President Trump is holding a rally Wednesday night in a cargo hangar with as many as 10,000 people expected.

In a statement, former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump's Democratic rival, saying Trump's headed to Iowa to "spread more lies about the pandemic and distract from his record of failure."

Biden declared the President has no plan to get the virus under control.

Trump's visit to Iowa this close to the election is notable. He won the state handily in 2016, but crippling effects from the virus, and the trade war with China's impact on farmers, has changed the landscape.

The two candidates are preparing to make their cases to voters in dueling town halls Thursday night, instead of at the head-to-head debate that was scrapped in the wake of the President's coronavirus diagnosis.

You can watch President Trump's town hall Thursday evening on News 11, or you can stream it here on KYMA.com beginning at five.