Coronavirus: Biden releases new campaign video criticising Trump’s response
Ad claims president ‘has failed our country at a time when we need him most’
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Your support makes all the difference.Joe Biden has released a new campaign video, attacking Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Democratic attack ad, paid for by Joe Biden for President, track’s Mr Trump’s response to the pandemic from the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the the US on 22 January to 22 March, two months later.
The video shows Mr Trump claiming to have the outbreak under control in January, saying “it’s going to disappear, one day it’s like a miracle it will disappear.”
It then skips to 28 February, where Mr Trump is still downplaying the outbreak, telling reporters that “now the Democrats are politicising,” and “this is their new hoax.”
As the number of cases start to rise, the president responds to a question asking him how he’d rate his response to the outbreak, saying: “I’d rate it a 10. I think we’ve done a great job.”
The ad shows the number of confirmed cases rising dramatically, while Mr Trump’s responses get more irate and his last comment calls out the media for inaccurate reporting.
“It’s so insulting when they write phoney stories that they know are fake news, but remember we inherited a broken, obsolete system,” he says.
The video ends with the claims: “Real crises demand real leadership. Not lies. Not excuses. Not scapegoats.”
Alongside the ad Mr Biden tweeted: “In times of crisis, American presidents have always stepped up to meet the moment. But all we’ve gotten from Donald Trump are lies, excuses, and scapegoats. Trump has failed our country at a time when we need him most.”
The Trump campaign sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations on Wednesday in an attempt to get another video by Priorities USA Action that criticises the president’s handling of the outbreak, off the air.
Similarly to Mr Biden’s video, Priorities USA Action’s ad overlays quotes from the president alongside a chart showing the rise in coronavirus cases.
The campaign took issue with the start of the video, which they believe “fraudulently and maliciously imply that President Trump called the coronavirus outbreak a ‘hoax'.”
Priorities USA Action, the largest Democratic Super Pac, remained neutral in the race for the nominee, but have supported Mr Biden since his success on Super Tuesday.
On Thursday the group released a statement confirming its intention to keep running the advert: “The fact that Trump is going to such great lengths to keep the American people from hearing his own words adds to the urgency of communicating them far and wide.”
Mr Biden recently attacked Mr Trump’s suggestion that the shutdown could end as early as Easter Sunday, 12 April, in order to minimise damage to the economy.
“He should stop talking and start listening to the medical experts,” Mr Biden said on CNN.
“You talk about having an economic crisis. You want an economic crisis? Watch the number of dead go up. We all want the economy to open up as rapidly as impossible, the way to do that is to take care of the medical side of this immediately,” he added.
According to a tracking project hosted by Johns Hopkins University, upwards of 82,404 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the US. The death toll has reached at least 1,178.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended a two-week ban on gatherings of more than 50 people as part of the battle to contain the spread of the contagion.
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