‘These guys are not very polite’: Biden calls Trump supporters who disrupted Minnesota rally ‘ugly folks’

‘They’re like Trump. But look, they’re going to be OK. We’re going to take care of them as well’

Joe Biden lashed out at a group of Minnesotans disrupting his campaign rally, saying the “ugly folks” were not polite for interrupting his speech criticising Donald Trump over the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Dr Fauci called for a mask mandate last week, this isn’t a political statement like those ugly folks over there beeping their horns, this is a patriotic duty for God sake,” Mr Biden said.

It is the second time in the past week that Mr Biden insulted disruptive Trump supporters after saying they were “chumps” in Pennsylvania, and it evokes the “basket of deplorables” speech from Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Video posted online showed the Trump supporters chanting “Joe’s a crook” while waving flags, blowing whistles and horns, and ringing cowbells.

Mr Biden’s drive-in rally in Minnesota’s Falcon Heights began with attacks on the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as the apparent Trump supporters attempted to drown out the audio.

“These guys are not very polite but they’re like Trump. But look, they’re going to be OK. We’re going to take care of them as well. We need to come together, made a fight for all these folks,” Mr Biden said.

“There’s a reason they don’t want to hear me, because they know the president doesn’t’ say anything. So they’re used to not hearing anything.”

It comes a week after a 24 October parking lot rally in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, where Trump supporters can be heard from across the street playing music, honking and shouting “four more years”.

Addressing the crowd, Mr Biden said he’s running as a Democrat but will govern as an American president for everybody.

“I’ll work as hard for those who don’t support me as those who do, including those chumps at the microphone out there,” he said.

Mr Biden isn’t the first Democrat presidential candidate to speak their mind about supporters of Donald Trump.  

In 2016, then-candidate Clinton delivered a speech about eight weeks out from election day that was considered to have been a contributing factor, among others, to her upset loss to Mr Trump.

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

She added: “Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. "