'Talk about losers': The top moments from CNN’s
kid-gloves town hall with Biden
On Tuesday, voters got in Trump's face for the first
time. On Thursday, they practically gave Biden a hero's welcome in Scranton,
Pa.
By
CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO
09/18/2020
12:22 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/18/talk-about-losers-cnn-town-hall-joe-biden-417560
For the
second time this week, a presidential candidate fielded questions from voters
in a town hall setting. But if ABC’s event with President Donald Trump was an
icy grilling, CNN’s drive-in conversation with Joe Biden Thursday was more like
an affable reunion of old acquaintances.
“Chief,
didn't I meet you when you were chief?” Biden said through a half-smile,
pointing at the man preparing to ask him a question. Bill Barrett, a retired
police chief who is in his fifth term on city council, wanted to know how Biden
will address growing violence in cities and the lack of respect for police and
the military.
Barrett
confirmed that, yes, they’d met when he was chief. And so it went with several
other questioners and Biden during a 75-minute homecoming close by to where the
candidate spent his youth.
The
back-to-back town halls helped shape the contours of the upcoming debates in a
presidential contest where Biden has maintained a steady lead in battleground
states.
Here’s a
look at the key moments from Thursday night.
Scranton
vs. Park Avenue
Trump has
maintained an unshakable appeal among a segment of working-class Americans —a
group he used to refer to as the “super elite” (“We got more brains, we got
better houses, apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter,” he told
supporters in the summer of 2018.). Biden, a product of Scranton, had made some
inroads with the cohort, but on Thursday, he used an answer in which he
acknowledged his own white privilege to more overtly frame the race between him
and Trump as one of class differences.
“I really
do view this campaign as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue,” Biden
said. Turning folksy, Biden said all the people out there who are “busting
their necks” — all they want is a fair shot.
“And guys
like Trump, who inherited everything, and squandered what they inherited, are
the people that I have always had a problem with, not the people who are
busting their neck,” Biden added.
But Trump
couldn't care less, Biden said: "All that President Trump could see from
Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about is the stock market.”
It was a
direct reference to Trump’s answers on Tuesday, when George Stephanopoulos
pressed him on the uneven economy that continues to favor the affluent over
working people. “George,” Trump said, “stocks are owned by everybody,” pointing
to retirement plans and other investments.
“How many
of you all own stock in Scranton?” Biden asked Thursday. “Not a whole lot of
people own stock.”
Biden then
sounded a more personal note about people who grew up in places like Scranton.
He said he was used to people turning up their noses “at us,” “who look at us
and think that we're suckers, look at us and they think that we don't — we're
not equivalent to them.”
“Well, I
tell you what bothered me, to tell you the truth. Maybe it's my Scranton roots.
I don't know,” he continued, “But when you guys started talking on television
about, ‘Biden, if he wins, will be the first person without an Ivy League
degree to be elected president,’ I'm thinking, who the hell makes you think I
have to have an Ivy League degree to be president?”
Covid
contrast
Pressed by
voters on Tuesday, Trump described presiding over a roaring economy that only
slowed at the onset of the “plague,” his term for the coronavirus. In the same
event, the president claimed that he “up-played” the threat of the virus,
despite admitting in taped interviews with Bob Woodward that he purposely
downplayed it.
He said the
virus would eventually subside due to “herd mentality,” when health experts
believe reaching herd immunity without the help of a vaccine would mean an
enormous death toll. And in the days since the ABC town hall, Trump directly
contradicted the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by
incorrectly contending that face masks are a “mixed bag” and that a vaccine
will arrive on a far quicker timeline than the CDC official estimated.
All of this
played into Biden’s hand, and he worked the contrasts hard. For much of the
early part of the night, he teed off on Trump for undermining face masks and
holding large gatherings, calling the rallies where thousands have gathered
packed closely together “extremely dangerous.”
"I
don’t trust the president on vaccines,” Biden said. “If [Anthony] Fauci says
the vaccine is safe, I’d take the vaccine."
Biden
called Trump’s resistance to acting earlier on the virus “close to criminal.”
He stressed that he prays a vaccine becomes available but that the realities of
delivering it would take far longer than Trump is promising and held out
Canada’s comparative successes to critique Trump’s response.
“Yesterday,
1,200 deaths in the United States. All of Canada had nine,” Biden said.
"Last Friday we had 1,000 deaths. All of Canada had zero deaths. This
president is doing it all wrong. We need to make a fundamental change in the
way we’re moving.”
But Biden
vastly overstated what protections could have worked against the virus. He
argued that had Trump done his job, everybody would still be alive — not true.
“All the people — I’m not making this up,” Biden said, driving the point home.
“Just look at the data. Look at the data.”
Calling out
Barr
Biden
didn’t hold back when he was given a clean shot at Bill Barr, calling the
attorney general's likening of the coronavirus safety protocols to slavery
“outrageous.”
Barr had
compared statewide stay-at-home orders to stop the spread of the coronavirus to
slavery, in a speech where he also denigrated the Black Lives Matter movement
as exploitative.
“Putting a
national lockdown, stay-at-home orders is like house arrest. Other than
slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, it's the greatest intrusion
on civil liberties in American history," Barr said in a speech Wednesday.
Biden
questioned how that equated to taking away freedoms, as he grew visible angry.
“I will
tell you what takes away your freedom,” he said. “What takes away your freedom
is not being able to see your kid, not being able to go to the football game or
baseball game, not being able to see your mom or dad sick in the hospital, not
being able to do the things, that’s what is costing us our freedom. And it’s
been the failure of this president to deal, to deal with this virus, and he
knew about it.”
Fracking
flips
During the
primary, Biden and his campaign sought to highlight not a ban, but a suspension
of leases to frack on federal lands. Even that answer opened up an avenue for
Trump to pounce in battleground states like Pennsylvania.
Biden’s
answers of late have been even less accommodating. He’s now stressing that he
won’t ban the practice until the country finds a path to alternative energies
that provides comparable jobs.
“Fracking
has to continue because we need a transition, Biden said. “We’re going to get
to net-zero emissions by 2050, and we’ll get to net-zero power emissions by
2035. But there’s no rationale to eliminate, right now, fracking.”
Asked
whether the Green New Deal, which he doesn’t support, is “too much,” Biden said
no. But, “I have my own deal.”
“It
requires for us to move in a direction to fundamentally change the way in which
we deal with the environment,” pointing to his past work to fund more
“renewable energy so it's now more competitive than it is for coal or for oil
or for gas.”
'Talk about
losers'
Biden again
seized on the recent story in The Atlantic in which Trump reportedly called
soldiers who died in combat “suckers” and “losers” — making for one of his
sharpest attacks over the night. (Trump has vociferously denied the story,
which was based on the accounts from unnamed sources.)
A woman
whose 66-year-old mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma two years ago
asked Biden how he could make health care more affordable.
Biden
launched into Trump going to the federal courts to gut the Affordable Care Act.
Thinking about those who are sick, Biden began taking about his late son, Beau,
who he said returned home after a year in Iraq because he had stage 4
glioblastoma. In the past, Biden has repeatedly referred to Trump as a fool —
for his handling of the virus, and also for accusing Biden of taking
performance-enhancing drugs. On Thursday, he suggested the president is also a
loser.
“The
president referred to guys like my son, he won the Bronze Star, the Conspicuous
Service Medal, refer[red] to them as losers,” Biden said, his hand chopping the
air. “Losers. Talk about losers.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário