Election 2020: Biden campaign reacts to Trump’s speech on Mount Rushmore

“Our entire country is suffering the excruciating costs of having a negligent and divisive president who cares about nothing but his own benefit: neither the sick, nor the unemployed, nor our constitution, nor our troops in danger.” Campaign spokesman Andrew Bates in a Trump statement. “Even as the outbreak intensifies, he admitted to ordering that the response to federal tests be diluted.”

The Trump campaign responded on Saturday, saying that “the idea that Biden, with more than 40 years of DC failure, has any notion or ability to strengthen our union is absurd.”

“Due to political pressure from the left, Biden is forced to accept that the United States was fundamentally flawed from the beginning and continues to be so today. On the contrary, President Trump is proud of our history and firmly believes in our greatness today.” said the director of communications for the Trump campaign. Tim Murtaugh said in a statement.

Murtaugh added: “The cultural war has been declared by the left mobs that roam the streets of our cities and destroy public monuments, and are allies of Joe Biden.”

With Mount Rushmore as a backdrop, Trump on Friday criticized a “ruthless campaign” by his political enemies to “erase our history, defame our heroes, erase our values” by removing monuments that some say are symbols of racial oppression. Trump repeatedly denounced attempts to examine flaws in the United States’ past and slandered protesters as a nefarious left-wing mafia with the intention of “ending the United States.”

Instead of reaching a more unifying tone during the celebration of Independence Day, Trump fueled the culture war and made a passionate appeal to his base, using pronouns like “we” and “they” and “they” in his comments to divide .

And despite the week when coronavirus cases skyrocketed in the U.S., the President mentioned the virus only in passing at the top of his remarks, thanking those working to combat it.

Last month, Trump said he instructed his administration to delay coronavirus testing because more cases made the country look bad. Administration officials alleged that the test slowdown has not been requested and that Trump’s comments were made “jokingly,” but the president said he was not joking.

In a short video message posted by the White House, the President wished Americans a happy Fourth of July and said the United States is “about to fight to get out” of the coronavirus pandemic.

See Trump and Biden face-to-face polls

Trump claimed that the United States “was doing better than any country in history, and not just us, any country” four months ago before it was “hit with this terrible plague from China.”

“Our country will return,” he said.

In contrast to Trump, Biden on Saturday focused his July 4 message on racial justice and called on Americans to “commit to finally living up to” America’s founding principle that “all men are created equal.”

“Now we have the opportunity to give the marginalized, the demonized, the isolated, and the oppressed a full part of the American dream,” Biden says in the video. “We have the opportunity to uproot the roots of systemic racism in this country.”

Biden later tweeted that “one of the most patriotic things you can do is wear a mask” during the coronavirus pandemic.

This story has been updated with a statement from the Trump campaign.

CNN’s Betsy Klein, Maeve Reston, Nicky Robertson and Megan Vasquez contributed to this report.

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