Trump Campaign: Joe Biden ‘Did a Deal with the Progressive Devil’

Senior officials from President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign told reporters Tuesday morning that Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden “did a deal with the progressive devil” and embraced far-left policies heading into the general election.

Campaign manager Bill Stepien and senior adviser Jason Miller told journalists that “Joe Biden has helped us with the bizarre leftward lurch he’s taken — on his own.” They noted that he had turned further left instead of pivoting to the center.

Since securing the nomination, Biden has adopted many of the policies of former “democratic socialist” rival Bernie Sanders. He has also borrowed Sanders’s rhetoric, openly calling for “revolution” and for “fundamentally transforming” the U.S., which he and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), describe as a country played by the crisis of “systemic racism.” And he has appointed Sanders advisers and supporters, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who led the drafting of Biden’s new policy on climate change. (He adopted a version of her “Green New Deal,” with slight changes.)

Biden seems to be at pains to dispel public perceptions that he has moved to the left. In remarks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Biden asked: “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for looters?” He also insisted, twice, that “I am not banning fracking,” though fact-checkers noted that Biden had promised to do exactly that several times in the campaign.

Stepien and Miller also made the case that the Trump campaign was “on offense” heading into the crucial last nine weeks of the presidential election, while the Biden campaign was “on defense.” They noted that the Biden campaign had bought TV ad time in four states that Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, including Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Nevada.

They also noted that Biden had announced post-Labor Day travel to four states — Arizona, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — that President Trump had also recently visited, suggesting Biden was trying to play catchup to the president.

Miller said that if Trump could hold Florida, a state he won in 2016, then Biden would have to sweep the entire Upper Midwest to have a chance at victory, something Miller said that he doubted Biden would be able to do.

Asked by reporters whether the Trump campaign was concerned about Florida, Miller and Stepien said that the campaign was happy with trends moving in Trump’s direction, as well as advances that Republicans were making in voter registration there.

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, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.