Biden accuses Trump of giving up virus fight
Published on: Tuesday, October 27, 2020
By: AFP
Joe Biden waves to supporters before speaking at a Drive-In rally.
WASHINGTON: US presidential challenger Joe Biden has accused Donald Trump of giving up in the fight against Covid-19 as the president faced a new outbreak in his team, surging infections nationwide and an uncomfortable admission by his chief of staff.Nine days before the vote—and with reported US coronavirus deaths having surpassed the grim total of 225,000 — Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows conceded that “we are not going to control the pandemic,” which he said could only be done through “vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas.”ADVERTISEMENT
Control was not practical, he said, because “it is a contagious virus just like the flu.”
Biden immediately seized on Meadows’ comment as he again hammered the administration over the virus, which has set records for new cases in recent days, with nearly 90,000 on Saturday and more than 63,000 Sunday.
“It was a candid acknowledgement of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away,” the former vice president said in a statement.
“It hasn’t, and it won’t.”ADVERTISEMENT
He spoke as millions of Americans—wary of crowded polling booths on Election Day as coronavirus cases surge, and energized by a race that both candidates have framed as existential—continued to vote early, whether by mail or in person.
With nine days still to go early voting has surpassed all the pre-election ballots from four years earlier, an independent vote monitor said.
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The tally by the independent US Election Project, run by the University of Florida, said that as of Sunday more than 59 million people had voted so far. Some 137 million votes were cast in total in 2016.
Down in the polls and with time running out, Trump over the weekend was continuing a furious pace of campaigning, with stops in New Hampshire and Maine.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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His repeated efforts to downplay the severity of the pandemic or shift voters’ attention elsewhere has been met with the constant drip of bad news about the virus.
The latest example was Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short, and reportedly several of his aides, testing positive for Covid, swelling the list of administration staff to have caught the virus.