‘I just don’t get these guys’: Biden blasts Trump, GOP lawmakers over virus response
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden attacked President Donald Trump’s deal-making abilities and criticized congressional Republicans’ coronavirus response as woefully inadequate during a rare question-and-answer session with reporters Wednesday.
In his first news conference in more than a month, the former vice president touted his work advancing the 2009 Recovery Act under the previous administration as a model for how to reinvigorate a flailing economy and help hurting Americans.
But Trump’s White House and leading GOP lawmakers, Biden charged, were unwilling to mount a similarly effective federal intervention and meet this new moment of national need.
“This administration seems to think it’s all of a sudden going to go away,” he said. “Like angel dust is going to be sprayed around. Everything’s going to be OK. I just don’t get it. They have to know better. They have to know better.”
Biden, who served for decades in the Senate and has boasted about his skills brokering bipartisan legislative compromises, appeared incensed by the current impasse in coronavirus relief negotiations and Republicans’ stated concerns about exacerbating the country’s financial deficit.
“I just don’t get these guys. I really don’t. Not a joke. I’ve been doing this a long time. But I’ve never seen a president lack as much leadership … in ability to make a deal,” Biden said.
“Talk about a know-nothing Congress on the Republican side and a know-nothing president,” he added. “I mean, I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. But it’s going to change, come January, God willing.”
In his exchanges with reporters, Biden also sought to deflect coronavirus-related criticisms leveled at him by Trump’s reelection campaign in recent weeks and elaborate on his plans for thwarting the disease’s spread.
After coming under fire from Republicans last month for saying he would reinstate widespread lockdown orders if scientists recommended he do so, Biden softened his stance Wednesday, predicting there is “going to be no need, in my view, to … shut down the whole economy.”
“I got asked by David Muir a question, if I was asked to shut everything down,” Biden said of his seized-upon interview with the ABC News anchor. “I took that as a generic question, if — am I going to follow the science?”
And on the subject of his call for nationwide mask requirements — another contentious proposal — Biden described himself as a “constitutionalist” and acknowledged it was unclear whether a president “could mandate everyone” to cover their faces in public.
Instead, “what I would be doing is putting as much pressure as I could on every governor ... every mayor, every county executive, every local official and everyone in business,” Biden said.
“Putting pressure on them to say, ‘What you’re doing is irresponsible. Make sure you wear a mask and maintain social distancing.’ And the vast majority of the American people accept that notion.”
