Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign accused President Donald Trump Sunday of allowing “countless unnecessary deaths” in the coronavirus pandemic, an escalation in response to criticism by Eric Trump.
Trump’s son appeared Saturday evening on Fox News’ Justice with Judge Jeanine, telling host Jeanine Pirro that Democrats were “are trying to milk this for everything they can.” He referred specifically to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s effort to mandate vote by mail as part of her latest coronavirus relief bill, which passed along party lines on Friday — with 14 Democrats voting against the bill.
Eric Trump also took a shot at Biden. “Biden loves this,” he said, referring to the lockdowns. “Biden can’t go onstage without making some horrible blunder. I mean, even from his basement, he’s making awful gaffes every single day. So his campaign is thrilled that he’s not going out there.”
He continued: “And they think they are taking away Donald Truump’s greatest tool, which is being able to go into an arena, and fill it with 50,000 people every single time, right? So they will. And you watch — they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3rd. And guess what? After November 3rd, coronavirus will magically, all of a sudden go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen. They’re trying to deprive him of his greatest asset, which is the fact that the American people love him, the fact that he is relatable the fact that he can go out there and draw a massive crowd. Joe Biden can’t get 10 people in a room. My father is getting 50,000 in a room. And they want to do everything they can to stop him. So make no mistake. To a lot of them, Jeanine, to a lot of them, this is a very cognizant strategy that they are trying to deploy. No different than, again, the nonsense that they’re trying to throw in the Hope Act [sic], it’s no different than the mail-in voting that they want to do all these places, no different than wanting illegal immigrants to vote in our country. It is a cognizant strategy, and it’s sad — and again, it’s not going to be allowed to happen, and we’ll going to win in November.
In response, Biden’s deputy campaign manger and spokesperson, Kate Bedingfield, issued the following statement (emphasis added):
We’re in the middle of the biggest public health emergency in a century, with almost 90,000 Americans dead, 1.5 million infected, and 36 million workers newly jobless, so for Eric Trump to claim that the coronavirus is a political hoax that will “magically” disappear is absolutely stunning and unbelievably reckless. The simple fact is that President Trump ignored the threat of the coronavirus for months and has mishandled the response at every step since — destroying the strong economy he inherited from the Obama-Biden administrations and leading to countless unnecessary deaths. Trump’s campaign knows he can’t run on that dismal record so they’re desperate to do whatever they can to throw up a smokescreen to try to conceal his historic mismanagement of the crisis.
Biden’s son Hunter has kept a low profile, since he has been accused by critics of using his father’s former position to earn money from the corrupt Burisma energy company in Ukraine, and to secure funding from the Bank of China for a private investment fund he co-founded. Both arrangements began during the Obama-Biden administration.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.