On Tuesday, in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former vice president Joe Biden hammered President Donald Trump for the abject failures of his response to the Coronavirus. Trump and his team have failed to implement any kind of effective plan for curtailing the spread of the virus, which has now killed over 138,000 Americans, according to one tally. The pandemic has sparked and exacerbated some major crises, like economic instability, as reflected by the recent jobs report that put national unemployment at 11.1 percent in June. In his Tuesday speech, Biden also laid out a plan to spend trillions in modernizing the economy to help combat climate change and shore up national economic defenses against future threats.
As he began his speech, Biden said:
‘Mr. President, please listen to your public health experts, instead of denigrating them. Do your job, Mr. President, because if we can’t deal with the public health crisis, we can’t deal with the economic crisis or deal with almost 18 million Americans who are out of work and the incredible pain inflicted on small businesses and communities of color. We can’t deal with the climate crisis that could cost us and cast us into an even darker and more permanent shadow that would loom over the country and the world for a long time.’
The White House has recently been trying to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, who has been a high-profile figure on the science-based side of the federal government’s Coronavirus response. The administration even leaked a document to reporters outlining times when Fauci had supposedly been wrong, but the document brazenly misrepresented his remarks.
Biden continued, noting that if Americans continue down the Trump path, then the country “won’t be able to do what Americans have always done — come back stronger than ever before, with the grit, toughness, and resilience that characterizes who we are.” Watch his comments below:
Joe Biden: "Do your job, Mr. President." pic.twitter.com/bd6oRoCrvG
— The Hill (@thehill) July 14, 2020
Specifically, Biden’s speech also included a proposal for $2 trillion in spending over four years to “significantly escalate the use of clean energy in the transportation, electricity and building sectors,” as The New York Times explains. He called the plans “the most critical investments we can make for the long-term health and vitality of both the American economy and the physical health and safety of the American people.”
Trump has repeatedly downplayed the threat of climate change to the point of once saying that he didn’t believe a report about looming economic impacts that had been produced by his own administration. He and his team have also sought to roll back environmental protections across the board.
Voters have evidently been paying attention to Biden’s proposals. Biden consistently leads Trump in polls on both the national level and in individual swing states around the country. In one recent poll, Biden even had a substantial lead in Texas, which is, of course, traditionally considered a very “red” state. In the poll, Biden had 46 percent of the support, compared to just 41 percent for Trump. It’s not the first time that Biden has led in a Texas poll, suggesting that the state is very much in play heading into November.
