Joe Biden: trust scientists, not Trump, on
realities of coronavirus
Democratic presidential nominee tells town hall the
president’s pandemic response is ‘close to criminal’ and crisis is far from
over
Joan E
Greve
@joanegreve
Fri 18 Sep
2020 05.02 BSTLast modified on Fri 18 Sep 2020 05.50 BST
Joe Biden
sent a message to voters on Thursday night that differed starkly from Donald
Trump’s unlikely coronavirus promises, saying: “The idea that there’s going to
be a vaccine, and everything is going to be fine tomorrow is just not rational,
just not reasonable.”
Speaking at
a drive-in town hall in the Pennsylvania town of Moosic, just south of
Scranton, the Democratic nominee warned the country would not immediately
return to normal life even if a coronavirus vaccine was soon approved.
Biden’s CNN
town hall came two days after Donald Trump held a similar event in nearby
Philadelphia, but the president sent a very different message on the pandemic,
once again implausibly suggesting coronavirus was “going to disappear” and that
a vaccine would be available in weeks.
Biden’s
unusual town hall venue underscored the long road ahead the country faces.
Biden addressed an audience of about 250 voters, some of whom sat in camping
chairs next to their parked cars as the former vice-president took their
questions. “Who knew drive-ins were coming back?” the CNN anchor Anderson
Cooper joked at the start of the event.
Echoing
comments he made during a Wednesday speech, Biden said he did not trust Trump’s
statements on the development of a coronavirus vaccine, accusing the president
of politicizing the issue for the sake of his re-election.
“I don’t
trust the president on vaccines. I trust Dr Fauci,” Biden said, referring to
the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “If
Fauci says the vaccine is safe, I’d take the vaccine. We should listen to the
scientists, not to the president.”
Biden’s
comments were a notable contrast to Trump’s clash this week with Dr Robert
Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The
president questioned Redfield’s credibility on Wednesday, after the CDC director
testified to the Senate that a coronavirus vaccine would not be widely
available until the late second quarter or early third quarter of next year.
Trump claimed Redfield was “confused” when he made that prediction.
During his
town hall, Biden said Trump’s response to the pandemic had been “close to
criminal”, and he did not shy away from discussing the country’s mounting
coronavirus death toll, which is expected to surpass 200,000 within days.
The first
voter to ask Biden a question, Shani Adams, noted she recently lost her sister
to coronavirus. Biden expressed his condolences to Adams and told her: “You
know, we talk about almost 200,000 deaths and it’s almost like background
noise. But it means a lot of empty chairs.”
In contrast
Trump suggested on Wednesday that the country’s coronavirus death toll would be
much lower if Americans who lived in Democratic-controlled states were not
counted.
Virtually
every answer Biden provided on Thursday appeared designed to draw a clear
distinction between himself and the current president. Drawing on his early
childhood in Pennsylvania, Biden described the presidential race as “a campaign
between Scranton and Park Avenue”.
When
Anderson asked Biden if he believed he had benefited from white privilege in his
life, the Democratic nominee acknowledged he had but quickly pivoted to a
reflection on classism.
“Grow up
here in Scranton. We’re used to guys who look down their nose at us,” Biden
said. “Guys like Trump, who inherited everything and squandered what they
inherited, are the people that I’ve always had a problem with. Not the people
who are busting their neck.”
While a
number of Biden’s answers were short on policy details, the Democrat instead
spent much of the night presenting a character-based argument for his
candidacy. Criticizing Trump for raising doubts about the legitimacy of the
election, Biden asked, “What’s happened to us? This is not who we are. This is
not what America is. No president’s ever said anything like that.”
When asked
if he would accept the results of the election, Biden said: “Sure, the full
results, count every vote.”
The next
major opportunity for Biden to change the minds of undecided voters will come
later this month when he debates Trump for the first time. Biden told Cooper
that he had already started preparing for the debates, studying Trump’s recent
comments and crafting concise answers to potential questions. “I’m
looking forward to it,” Biden said.
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