President Trump says he’d “love” to talk with Joe Biden about the coronavirus outbreak after Biden’s presidential campaign said he wanted to call.
“Sleepy Joe, did he write the statement or did some PR person write it?” Trump said at a White House press conference Wednesday.
But Trump added: “Oh absolutely, I’d love to speak with him, sure… I always found him to be a nice guy. I don’t know him very well, frankly, but I think he’s probably a nice guy — No, if he’d like to call I would absolutely take his call.”
The presumptive Democratic nominee’s campaign offered to call earlier in the day after Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway asked during a TV interview why Biden doesn’t “call the White House today and offer some support?”
Biden’s campaign gave Trump a series of kicks in a statement offering to call.
The former vice president “has been extending this exact offer for weeks, and he did so again on the air last night,” deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement.
“As he has said repeatedly, Donald Trump is not accountable for coronavirus itself — but he is accountable for the federal government’s slow and chaotic response to this outbreak,” Bedingfield said.
“Unfortunately, Trump spent months after the virus was discovered disregarding repeated warnings from his scientific and intelligence experts, and downplaying the threat of this outbreak to the American people.”
Bedingfield continued: “He could have heeded Vice President Biden’s public advice not to take China’s word as they misled the world about their efforts to stop the spread.
“The Obama-Biden administration left behind a literal playbook for pandemic response, and unfortunately this administration left it on the shelf. Now we have more coronavirus cases than any other country. Because of this, Donald Trump should heed the bipartisan calls for him to allow open enrollment into the ACA during this public health crisis.”
Biden critiqued Trump on Monday during an appearance on MSNBC that was panned as difficult to understand.
“One, we have to depend on what the president’s going to do right now. And first of all, he has to tell — wait til the cases before anything happens,” Biden said.
https://twitter.com/davecatanese/status/1244693029329539072
Trump and his allies often Trump said he didn’t think Biden was “capable” of being president and that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would be a better Democratic candidate.
Trump attacked Biden last week while defending his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Trump noted Biden called him “xenophobic” on Feb. 1 — one day after Trump imposed travel restrictions on China, though it was unclear if Biden was referring to the ban.
“I made a decision to close off to China. That was weeks early,” Trump said last week. “And, honestly, I took a lot of heat. Sleepy Joe Biden said it’s xenophobic. I don’t know if he knows what that means, but that’s okay. He said it’s racist, what I did.”
The US has the largest publicly acknowledged outbreak of COVID-19, passing 200,000 infections Wednesday. More than 4,500 US residents have died.