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With less than seven weeks to go before the Nov.3 election, Joe Biden has stepped up his public appearances after spending long periods of time at his Delaware home, even as Trump repeatedly slammed the changing states.
FILE: Former US Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential nominee, greets as he disembarks from a plane at New Castle Airport in New Castle, Delaware, on Aug. 31, 2020, following a trip to Pennsylvania for campaign events. Image: AFP.
SCRANTON – Joe Biden lashed out at President Donald Trump on Thursday for his “near criminal” handling of the coronavirus when the Democrat answered questions from voters affected by the pandemic in a state that is key to his electoral hopes.
Returning to the stark city of his birth, the former vice president participated in an outdoor town hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he painted himself as the champion of hard-working Americans who he said have been ignored by a more concerned president. for boosting Wall Street than helping working families.
Biden, who seemed energetic while handling questions from participants, also accused Trump of knowing the severity of the coronavirus threat earlier this year and hiding it from the nation.
“He knew it and did nothing. It’s almost criminal,” Biden said in one of several fierce criticisms of Trump.
“This president should resign,” he added.
The 77-year-old candidate also used a populist inflection, framing the 2020 election between himself and billionaire real estate mogul Trump as “a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue.”
Blue-collar Americans, like the family Biden grew up in, “are just as good as everyone else,” he said.
“And guys like Trump, who inherited everything and squandered what they inherited, it’s the people I’ve always had problems with, not the people who are breaking their necks.”
The harsh remarks seemed aimed at white working-class voters with whom he must do better if he wants to win back the swing states that went to Trump in 2016.
Biden also showed his famous empathic side when he spoke with interrogators who had medical ailments, whose family members died from Covid-19 or who were suffering financially.
“Thank you for what you do,” she told a nurse who voted for Trump in 2016.
CONTRASTING STYLES
Less than seven weeks before the Nov.3 election, Biden has stepped up his public appearances after spending long periods of time at his Delaware home, even as Trump repeatedly slammed the changing states.
Now both candidates are getting into the physical campaign in earnest, albeit still in different ways.
Trump returned to Wisconsin on Thursday for a public rally fueled by his trademark bravado, a contrast to Biden’s calmer style.
Before his departure, Trump criticized on Twitter the move by many states to encourage voters to send their ballots by mail, thus avoiding potential coronavirus risks in polling stations.
The change, which is popular with Democrats, will further “THE CAUSE OF ELECTIONS,” he tweeted, stating that the results of the November 3 vote “CAN NEVER BE PRECISELY DETERMINED.”
He offered no proof of his claims, and the US mail vote has never been linked to large-scale fraud.
Biden is trying to project a reassuring alternative to Trump’s fury.
At CNN City Hall, Biden answered questions from a live, socially-estranged audience of 100, who parked in front of the stage to watch the event.
Trump, speaking to supporters in Wisconsin, called Biden’s city council “the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Trump focused on the promises of economic growth, an area where polls consistently show him ahead of Biden, and claimed that under Democratic pension funds “they would go down to depression levels.”
Biden has largely stayed close to his Delaware home during the pandemic that has so far killed nearly 200,000 Americans.
He has traveled to changing states like Wisconsin, Florida and Pennsylvania, but has avoided crowds and engages with voters in small, controlled settings.
The bereavement events come amid mounting tensions over handling the pandemic and Trump’s insistence that a safe and effective vaccine is just weeks away.
Biden rejected the timeline.
“I don’t trust the president on vaccines,” Biden said, explaining that he trusts the government’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci.
“If Fauci says the vaccine is safe, I take the vaccine.”
Animosity has risen between Trump and Biden ahead of their first debate, scheduled for Sept. 29 in Ohio.
Biden has always led Trump in national polls.
It is also ahead in several key states including Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all won by Trump in his shocking 2016 election victory, albeit by shrinking margins.
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