2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden slammed President Trump for failing to demonstrate any empathy for the working class during their first chaotic debate.
“Does your president understand at all what you’re going through? What so many other people are going through? The question is, does he see you where you are and where you want to be? Does he care?” Biden asked in Cleveland.
The two-term vice president’s critique of Trump raised his response to the coronavirus pandemic, a New York Times investigation this week that revealed the president hadn’t paid any federal income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years, and an Atlantic report this month that alleged he called dead war veterans “losers” and “suckers.”
“He lies to you about what exactly has happened,” he said, reinforcing his framing of the Nov. 3 election as a contest between working-class and wealthy values. “Are we stupid because we play by the rules?”
Biden’s address helped launch his seven-stop “Build Back Better Express” train tour Wednesday, which will take him and former second lady Jill Biden through eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. Biden famously commuted every day from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, D.C., when he was the state’s 36-year senator so he wouldn’t further upend his two sons’ lives after they lost their mother and 1-year-old sister in a 1972 car crash.
“I’ll fight for American jobs with the dignity of work and make the wealthy corporations begin to pay their fair share. I’ll protect your right to healthcare and build on and improve the Affordable Care Act. And I’ll always tell you the truth, always care about you whether you vote for me or not,” he said.
The tour is his first swing through critical battleground states that resembles a packed pre-pandemic campaign schedule.
Biden told reporters after his speech that he would comment more on the opening debate, an acrimonious, personally cutting affair in Cleveland, at his next stop in Alliance, Ohio. Earlier Wednesday, he shared an edited video of one of his and Trump’s more testy exchanges.
“Will you shut up, man?” Biden asked Trump at one point during cross-talk.
Had enough? pic.twitter.com/4W5OSoRzXI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020
