Category: Joe Biden

Trump steps up attacks on Biden over economy

The Hill logoPresident Trump is stepping up his economic attacks on Joe Biden, seeking to regain strength on an issue once seen as his golden ticket to reelection.

A number of polls still show that voters on net approve of Trump’s performance on the economy, but some surveys now show his presumptive Democratic opponent with an edge on the issue over him as the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc on the economy.

Biden also has sought to press an advantage and in recent days has rolled out his own economic proposals on how to bring about a recovery. Continue reading.

Biden: After intel briefings, warns of election interference

Joe Biden said Friday night that he’s begun receiving intelligence briefings as he warned that Russia, China and other adversaries were attempting to undermine the upcoming U.S. election in November.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee wasn’t specific and offered no evidence while addressing a virtual fundraiser with more than 200 attendees. But, in the process, he confirmed receiving classified briefings after saying as recently as late last month that he wasn’t getting them but might request one about reports of Russian bounties being offered on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“We know from before, and I guarantee you I know now because now I get briefings again. The Russians are still engaged, trying to de-legitimize our electoral process. Fact,” Biden said Friday. “China and others are engaged as well in activities designed for us to lose confidence in the outcome.” Continue reading.

From ‘Sleepy Joe’ to a destroyer of the ‘American way of life,’ Trump’s attacks on Biden make a dystopian shift

Washington Post logoPresident Trump has launched a slash-and-burn campaign against an exaggerated caricature of his Democratic opponent, casting former vice president Joe Biden as a destroyer of basic freedoms and a threat to voters’ safety who would “let terrorists roam free” and “abolish the American way of life.”

His new dystopian vision, with militant and extreme language not typical in American politics, marks a sharp departure from Trump’s previous effort to cast Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” an establishment politician with deteriorating mental abilities. It marks the latest effort, orchestrated by Trump’s advisers, to shift the conversation from rising coronavirus infections and deteriorating public support for the president’s pandemic response.

In new advertising, tweets and public statements that began to appear earlier this month, Trump has argued that the presumptive Democratic nominee is a harbinger of chaos and destruction, depicting a fantastical scarecrow largely divorced from reality.

Fox News host laughs at Trump’s botched attempt to fact-check claims about Joe Biden

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump was not prepared for an interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace, one of the few people on the network still willing to challenge his lies.

In a new clip released Friday from a forthcoming interview, Wallace contradicted Trump’s claim that his 2020 opponent Joe Biden wants to defund and abolish the police.

“They want to defund the police, and Biden wants to defund the police,” Trump said. Continue reading.

Senate GOP set to ramp up Obama-era probes

The Hill logoSenate Republicans are preparing to ramp up their Obama-era probes, pushing the controversial investigations back into the spotlight as the 2020 elections heat up.

The efforts have sparked high-profile tensions with Senate Democrats and public rebukes from former Vice President Joe Biden’s orbit. They view the efforts as an attempt to meddle in the 2020 elections, where Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee.

But with the Senate coming back to Washington on Monday, and the number of legislative days quickly dwindling, Republicans are preparing to step up their efforts. Continue reading.

Trump’s flawed Rose Garden assault on Joe Biden

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s media event Tuesday — which was mostly an extended monologue — was like watching our database of Trumpian claims unroll in real time. So many of Trump’s rhetorical favorites were tossed out — that he had built the best economy in U.S. history (no), that he inherited few ventilators (no), that he overrode his aides to impose some travel restrictions on China (no), that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “danced” in the streets in defiance of the coronavirus (no), that he “rebuilt” a “totally depleted” military (no), that the European Union was formed to take advantage of the United States (no). It went on and on.

But rather than rehash old ground, in this roundup we will focus on Trump’s claims against his election rival, former vice president Joe Biden. Violating norms and protocol, the president used the august setting of the Rose Garden for a sustained campaign-style attack. Here are some of the more noteworthy claims he made. We don’t award Pinocchios in roundups, but many of these statements are wildly off-course. Continue reading “Trump’s flawed Rose Garden assault on Joe Biden”

A new Trump ad shows why his re-election campaign is such a disaster

AlterNet logoThere’s a new ad out from the Trump campaign, and it shows quite clearly why the president’s team is having such a hard time selling the prospect of his re-election.

The video begins by listing a series of supposed agenda items from the “radical left-wing mob” — taking over cities, defunding police — claiming that Biden supports these goals.

Clearly, the Trump campaign had a plan to run against Sen. Bernie Sanders as a dangerous socialist, and it’s trying to use that same playbook against Biden. But however effective that script may or may not have been against Sanders, it’s clearly an uphill battle to use it against Biden. Biden famously and decisively won the primary against Sanders by running in opposition to the left-wing of the Democratic Party, so it will be hard to convince voters that he’s a secret radical. Continue reading.

Trump ad falsely suggests Biden supports defunding police

Washington Post logoThe Trump campaign has a problem. Former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has firmly rejected calls from left-wing activists to “defund police.” But clearly the Trump campaign wants to tag him with the somewhat confusing slogan. So it produced an ad that slickly tries to get around this uncomfortable fact.

The Trump campaign must think the effort is a winner. Ben Taber, an account manager at Advertising Analytics, says that as of July 13, the Trump campaign had spent $6.7 million placing the ad on network television and on local stations in Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada, Iowa, New Mexico and Michigan.

But, factually, the ad is a loser.

The Facts

The scenes of mayhem in the ad come from some of the recent looting that took place after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis. Okay, so these images are technically Donald Trump’s America, not Joe Biden’s. But we will leave that aside. Continue reading.

Virus outbreak reshapes presidential race in Sun Belt — CBS News Battleground Tracker poll

The coronavirus outbreak is reshaping the presidential race in three key Sun Belt states. Joe Biden is now leading President Trump by six points in Florida, and the two are tied in Arizona and competitive in Texas, where Biden is down by just a point to Mr. Trump. Biden has made gains in part because most say their state’s efforts to contain the virus are going badly — and the more concerned voters are about risks from the outbreak, the more likely they are to support Biden.

In all three states, most voters say their state reopened too soon, and those who say this feel their state went too fast under pressure from the Trump administration. Most also say the president is doing a bad job handling the outbreak. He may be paying a price for that, at least in the short term.

This is helping Biden not only to post bigger gains with groups that already trend Democratic — like women and younger voters — but also to cut into Mr. Trump’s margins with seniors. Seniors who are very concerned about coronavirus back Biden in large numbers.

Trump Says He ‘Aced’ Cognitive Test, but White House Won’t Release Details

New York Times logoPresident Trump has repeatedly ridiculed Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s fitness to be president. Mr. Biden’s campaign has called it a smear that has backfired.

President Trump on Thursday volunteered to Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, that he “very recently” took a test at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center measuring his mental acuity and “aced” it, but the White House would not say when he took it or why.

Mr. Trump boasted that his success on the test surprised his doctors as he continued his attempt to make a campaign issue of whether his presumptive Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was mentally fit.

“I actually took one when I — very recently, when I — when I was — the radical left were saying, is he all there? Is he all there? And I proved I was all there, because I got — I aced it. I aced the test,” Mr. Trump, 74, said in his interview with Mr. Hannity. Continue reading.