Trump's smell, the Star Trek vote and Superman: this week on the campaign trail

Every day is a high-stakes battle for Donald Trump and Joe Biden as the United States hurtles towards the November 3 vote, but this week also produced another bountiful array of weird and wonderful election news.

What does Trump smell of?

The big question of the 2020 election finally got asked, and answered.

The president emits wafts of "quite expensive aftershave and not overly done, just a light, gentle aroma," Piers Morgan told a Guardian interviewer who said he had always wondered about Trump's cologne.

"You imagine he'd smell like some flamboyant nightclub owner in the 70s, but he doesn't," Morgan added. "You get a whiff of hairspray, because it is permanently coiffured."

The British TV host, a friend of Trump's from their days on Celebrity Apprentice, used to be one of the few people that the president followed on Twitter.

But Trump unfollowed him earlier this year after Morgan wrote a brutally critical article.

Biden courts the Trekkie vote

The Biden campaign held a virtual rally this week targeting the Star Trek electorate, boldly going to canvas a whole new galaxy of voters.

Hosted by Democrats Pete Buttigieg and self-proclaimed nerd Andrew Yang, the "Trek the vote to victory!" event featured show stars including Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew and George Takei.

Getting into the mood, Buttigieg tweeted a photo of himself as a young boy wearing Star Trek costume.

He then held up a Borg action figure as he chatted with Takei about how the series promoted equality.

The campaign pushed on with the joke, saying "President Biden is the highly logical choice and Vice-President Harris will boldly go where no woman has gone before."

Up-and-coming Democrat Stacey Abrams revealed herself to be a true Trekkie superfan. She said the honor of speaking to the cast meant "no Christmas presents needed this year."

The Superman stunt that didn't happen

Donald Trump wanted to rip off his shirt to reveal a Superman T-shirt underneath when he left hospital after being treated for Covid-19, The New York Times reported this week.

It said Trump planned to appear frail as he walked out, before tearing off his white business shirt to reveal the Superman logo as a show of strength.

Trump floated the "Clark Kent" idea in several phone calls from the presidential suite at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the newspaper said.

Trump has since said in speeches that he feels like Superman after recovering, and claiming -- without medical evidence -- that he is surrounded by a "protective glow" of immunity.

Halloween at the White House

Masks are often part of Halloween costumes in any year -- but so are crowds, visiting neighbors and reaching into communal bags of candy.

The White House said its annual festivities are going "full-steam ahead" on October 31, with some Covid modifications, according to CNN.

The event draws dozens of families to the White House South Lawn for games and trick-or-treating with the president and first lady.

Guests often include White House staff, military families and local schoolchildren.

To Bee or not to Bee?

Sometimes, even for a prolific tweeter like Trump, there's such a thing as oversharing.

So the president may be wishing he hadn't been so quick to post an article about Biden from the satirical Babylon Bee news website.

Trump found himself the object of ridicule after highlighting the piece, a reasonably obvious joke claiming Twitter had shut down entirely to avoid disseminating news critical of Biden.