Tag: Joe Biden

Obama blasts Trump on coronavirus response

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Former president Barack Obama delivered an emphatic rebuke of President Trump and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic during campaign stops for Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Wednesday.

At a speech in Philadelphia, Obama said his successor has endangered the country and is “incapable of taking the job seriously.”

“Eight months into this pandemic, cases are rising again across this country,” Obama said. “Donald Trump isn’t suddenly going to protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself,” Continue reading.

Retired Navy admiral behind bin Laden raid says he voted for Biden

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William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

McRaven, who served as commander of U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014, wrote that he has already voted for Biden in Texas, where early voting began last week.

McRaven describes himself in the op-ed as “pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative.” Continue reading.

Elect Joe Biden. Reject Donald Trump.

Our View: In 2016, we broke tradition in urging you not to vote for Trump. Now we’re making our first presidential endorsement. We hope it’s our last.

Four years ago, the Editorial Board — an ideologically and demographically diverse group of journalists that is separate from the news staff and operates by consensus — broke with tradition and took sides in the presidential race for the first time since USA TODAY was founded in 1982. We urged readers not to vote for Donald Trump, calling the Republican nominee unfit for office because he lacked the “temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.” We stopped short, however, of an outright endorsement of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. This year, the Editorial Board unanimously supports the election of Joe Biden, who offers a shaken nation a harbor of calm and competence.

Recent polls show that more than 90% of voters have decided between Biden and Trump, and nothing at this point will change their minds. This editorial is for those of you who are still uncertain about which candidate to vote for, or whether to vote at all. It’s also for those who settled on Trump but might be having last-minute doubts.

Maybe you backed Trump the last time around because you hoped he’d shake things up in Washington or bring back blue-collar jobs. Maybe you liked his populist, anti-elitist message. Maybe you couldn’t stomach the idea of supporting a Democrat as polarizing as Clinton. Maybe you cast a ballot for a minor party candidate, or just stayed home. Continue reading.

Debate commission to mute Trump, Biden microphones during parts of Thursday debate

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The Commission on Presidential Debates said Monday night that it will mute Trump’s and Biden’s microphones during parts of Thursday’s presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville.

The 90-minute debate will be broken up into six 15-minute segments, each with a different topic. The commission said it will give Trump and Biden two minutes apiece to speak uninterrupted at the start of each segment. A period of “open discussion” will follow until the next segment begins.

Trump’s campaign has repeatedly opposed the idea of granting the moderator the power to shut off a candidate’s microphone — an idea that has been floated in the aftermath of the first debate, during which Trump repeatedly interrupted and jeered at Biden. Continue reading.

Biden takes cautious approach ahead of second Trump debate

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Former Vice President Joe Biden is taking a cautious approach ahead of the final presidential debate against President Trump in what is expected to be one of the final turning points in the campaign.

Public polls show the Democratic nominee leading in the core battleground states and running away from the president in national surveys, although the Biden campaign has warned that the race is far closer than how it’s being characterized by the national media.

Under pressure to alter the course of the race, Trump will make two stops in Arizona on Monday, followed by trips to Pennsylvania and North Carolina ahead of Thursday’s debate.

Why 1500 Faith Leaders Have Endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

Trump’s antics distract the nation from the existence of progressive Christians. 

The reality is that Biden is a lifelong, committed Catholic who speaks frequently about the role of his faith in his personal and political life. “My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion,” Biden wrote in his book “Promises to Keep: On Life in Politics.”

“Joe knows the power of prayer, and I’ve seen him in moments of joy and triumph, of loss and despair, turn to God for strength,” Sen. Chris Coons said during the Democratic National Convention. A New York Times review of nearly 60 eulogies the former vice president has delivered labeled him an “emissary of grief.” Continue reading.

Why These Voters Rejected Hillary Clinton but Are Backing Joe Biden

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For many Democrats and independents who sat out 2016, voted for third-party candidates or backed Donald Trump, Mr. Biden is more acceptable to them in ways large and small than Mrs. Clinton was.

Samantha Kacmarik, a Latina college student in Las Vegas, said that four years ago, she had viewed Hillary Clinton as part of a corrupt political establishment.

Flowers Forever, a Black transgender music producer in Milwaukee, said she had thought Mrs. Clinton wouldn’t change anything for the better.

And Thomas Moline, a white retired garbageman in Minneapolis, said he simply hadn’t trusted her.

None of them voted for Mrs. Clinton. All of them plan to vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr. Continue reading.

Trump’s 2016 campaign pledges on infrastructure have fallen short, creating opening for Biden

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The president made changes to taxes and trade, but the White House’s plans on roads, bridges and airports fizzled

MILWAUKEE — Gerry Winkleman points across the Milwaukee River at the former tannery where he worked for almost two decades as a union welder, repairing blow pipes and net machines that produced thousands of leather shoes and handbags every year.

Winkleman, 74, drives through a stretch of downtown Milwaukee that once served as a hub of U.S. manufacturing, pausing occasionally to note the factories that have either shuttered or moved their production to China over the past three decades: the Pabst and Schlitz breweries; the Allis-Chalmers manufacturing giant; several different tanneries; the Briggs & Stratton foundry; and Kearney & Trecker, which produced milling machines.

Winkleman voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in his life in 2016, largely due to Donald Trump’s promise to bring back manufacturing jobs and invest $1 trillion to rebuild U.S. infrastructure in Rust Belt states like Wisconsin. This year, Winkleman will vote for former vice president Joe Biden, a decision sealed in part by Trump’s decision to pursue tax cuts — which Winkleman says primarily benefited the rich— over infrastructure investments. Winkleman said he and other members of the building trades were “snookered” by Trump’s 2016 promises to rebuild the country. Continue reading.

Trump Threatens to ‘Leave the Country’ if He Loses to Biden

More than an hour into his latest rambling campaign rally speech in Macon, Georgia, on Friday night, President Donald Trump briefly imagined a future where he loses the 2020 election to Joe Biden. 

“You know what? Running against the worst candidate in the history of American politics puts pressure on me,” Trump told the crowd. “Could you imagine if I lose? My whole life—what am I going to do? I’m going to say, I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics! I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”

Currently trailing Biden by double digits in most national and many battleground state polls, the president faces multiple potential prosecutions should fail to win a second term next month. View the post and tweet here.

5 takeaways from the dueling Trump and Biden town halls

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President Trump and former vice president Joe Biden held dueling town halls Thursday night — forums that took the place of the presidential debate originally scheduled for the same night and which Trump pulled out of when it went to a virtual format.

The decision by NBC to air the event at the same time as Biden’s previously scheduled one on ABC was a source of controversy, but the simultaneous events provided a pretty good window into the contrasting approaches, as a debate would have, even if this was not side by side. Here are the takeaways.

1. Trump’s smorgasbord of misinformation and false choices — deftly called out

A couple of recent Trump interviews have stood out for the interviewers’ rare abilities and efforts to call out Trump in real time — one from Fox News’s Chris Wallace and another from Axios’s Jonathan Swan.