“Unfortunately, this virus laid bare the severe shortcomings of the current administration,” Mr. Biden said. In his own address, Mr. Sanders said the coronavirus crisis was “on the scale of major war.”
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| This disease could impact every nation and any person on the planet. We need a plan about how we’re going to aggressively manage here at home. You know I know people are worried. My thoughts are with those who are directly fighting this virus: those infected, families that have suffered a loss, first responders and health care providers who are putting themselves on the line, as I speak, for others. Downplaying it, being overly dismissive or spreading misinformation is only going to hurt us, and further advantage the spread of the disease. But neither should we panic or fall back on xenophobia. Labelling Covid-19 a foreign virus does not displace accountability for the misjudgments that have been taken thus far by the Trump administration. Let me be crystal clear: The coronavirus does not have a political affiliation. It will infect Republicans, Independents and Democrats alike, and will not discriminate based on national origin, race, gender or zip code. It will touch people in positions of power as well as the most vulnerable in our society, and it will not stop — banning all travel from Europe or any other part of the world may slow it. But, as we’ve seen, it will not stop |
NY TIMES
March 12, 2020
WILMINGTON, Del. — Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday delivered a forceful rebuke of President Trump’s leadership amid the coronavirus crisis, seeking to project steadiness and resolve from his perch as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In his own speech about the pandemic, Senator Bernie Sanders, Mr. Biden’s main rival, also flamed the president’s response. He provided a long list of policy proposals aimed in particular at helping low-income and working-class families, providing a glimpse of the extraordinary measures he might take if he were president.
“The crisis we face from the coronavirus is on a scale of a major war,” he said at a news conference in Burlington, Vt. “And we must act accordingly.”
Taken together, the candidates’ blistering denunciations of the president’s handling of the outbreak signaled that the coronavirus has fully overtaken the 2020 race, forcing the candidates to cancel events and propose new ways of campaigning, putting fresh political pressure on Mr. Trump, and placing matters of public health and trust at the forefront of the contest.
Mr. Biden, the former vice president, spoke Thursday afternoon from the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Del., about the grave challenges the country faces, and he detailed his ideas for managing the outbreak. He also aimed to draw sharp contrasts with Mr. Trump a day after the president addressed the nation from the Oval Office, establishing a preview of what Mr. Biden hopes will be a general election matchup.
“Unfortunately, this virus laid bare the severe shortcomings of the current administration,” Mr. Biden said, speaking from the hotel where he announced his 1972 bid for the Senate. “Public fears are being compounded by pervasive lack of trust in this president fueled by adversarial relationship with the truth that he continues to have.”
This moment of national anxiety, some of Mr. Biden’s allies believe, throws into sharp relief the choice Americans would face in a general-election matchup between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, and the stakes of that contest. Mr. Biden has been seeking to frame the race as a two-person contest against the president, in ways overt and subtle, even as he continues a primary battle with Mr. Sanders.
In his remarks, Mr. Biden offered his own plan for combating the virus, with proposals that included rapidly and vastly expanding testing — tests, he said, should be available at no charge — moving aggressively to boost hospital capacity and supporting an accelerated push for a vaccine that he said should be “again, free of charge.” And he argued that “the administration’s failure on testing is colossal.
”We are not ready yet, and the clock is ticking,” he warned.
He also described plans to help those who are struggling financially at a time of economic peril, appeared dismissive of corporate tax subsidies and said it was a “national disgrace that millions of our fellow citizens don’t have a single day of paid sick leave.”
If there ever was a time in the modern history of our country when we are all in this together, this is that moment. Now is the time to come together with love and compassion for all, including the most vulnerable people in our society who will face this pandemic from a health perspective or face it from an economic perspective. We are all in this together. Unfortunately in this time of international crisis, it is clear to me at least, that we have an administration that is largely incompetent, and whose incompetence and recklessness have threatened the lives of many, many people in our country. The American people deserve transparency, something that the current administration has fought day after day to stifle. In other words, we need to know what is happening right now in our country, in our states and in fact, all over the world.
Mr. Sanders, for his part, urged the president to declare the pandemic a national emergency, and encouraged the public and private sectors to work together to combat the virus and its effects. Like Mr. Biden, he outlined a list of recommendations to deal with the pandemic, including establishing national and state information hotlines, making all treatment “free of charge,” providing “emergency unemployment assistance” to those who lose their jobs, and expanding the Meals on Wheels and school lunch programs and SNAP “so that no one goes hungry during this crisis.” He also urged a “moratorium on evictions, on foreclosures and on utility shut offs.”
Perhaps above all, he used the health crisis as another opportunity to call for his signature health care plan, “Medicare for all.”
“Our country is at a severe disadvantage compared to every other major country on earth because we do not guarantee health care to all people as a right,” he said.
His remarks amounted to a vigorous critique of Mr. Trump, cloaked in the kind of sweeping, uncompromising proposals that have long defined his democratic socialist agenda. He left the news conference without taking questions.
Mr. Biden’s appearance here in Delaware came as his campaign underwent another shake-up after an initial shuffling last month. He brought on a new campaign manager as his team works to build out what has been an underfunded operation with major organizational challenges — despite a flurry of primary victories over the past two weeks.
Amid those successes, Mr. Biden has further intensified his focus on Mr. Trump, acting as if the general election were already underway. On Wednesday, his team announced the formation of a “Public Health Advisory Committee” studded with prominent health leaders and alumni of former President Barack Obama’s administration — a rollout that seemed intended to conjure the actions a president might take.
Members included Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon general; Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a prominent oncologist and a vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania; and Lisa Monaco, who served as a homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Mr. Obama. And when he spoke on Thursday, he did so against a backdrop of American flags, reading from teleprompters to the click of cameras and beginning with a nod to his “fellow Americans,” a setting reminiscent of a White House address.
“No president can promise to prevent future outbreaks,” he said. “But I can promise you this. When I’m president, we will be better prepared, respond better and recover better. We’ll lead with science. We’ll listen to the experts. We’ll heed their advice. And we’ll build American leadership and rebuild it to rally the world to meet the global threats.”
Throughout his remarks, Mr. Biden nodded — as he often does — to what he cast as the resiliency and potential of the American people.
Mr. Biden, who is 77, did not stop to take shouted questions about his own health.
He has previously expressed shock and frustration at Mr. Trump’s past skeptical remarks about the severity of the virus, and has sketched out other steps he would take as president to fight it, noting his work as vice president in combating Ebola. Ron Klain, who was Mr. Obama’s Ebola “czar,” is a top Biden adviser.
Mr. Trump’s own somber address Wednesday night, in which he announced he was blocking most travel from continental Europe and promised new aid for workers and businesses, was a break from his previous efforts to play down the effects of the outbreak. But he also mischaracterized some of his administration’s new travel policies and described the threat as a “foreign virus,” though Americans are infected along with many in other countries.
The Trump campaign quickly issued a response to Mr. Biden’s remarks on Thursday. “In times like this, America needs leadership and Biden has shown none,” said Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesman. “President Trump acted early and decisively and has put the United States on stronger footing than other nations. His every move has been aimed at keeping Americans safe, while Joe Biden has sought to capitalize politically and stoke citizens’ fears.”
As for Mr. Sanders, Mr. Murtaugh said in another statement, “He’s just another Democrat candidate for president trying to score political points by recklessly provoking anxiety and fear.” He also argued that the proposal from Mr. Sanders, the Vermont senator — who supports a sweeping single-payer system — would “drive doctors and other medical workers away from the profession, leaving America woefully unprepared for public health emergencies.”
Even as the candidates sought to project images of leadership, they are still politicians who face another debate and another round of primary elections in the coming days, and they are scrambling to adjust to a presidential contest now unfolding amid a pandemic.
In one sign of the major changes the virus is forcing on the presidential race, Mr. Biden’s team on Wednesday announced that previously scheduled campaign events in Chicago and Miami would be transformed into “virtual events” ahead of next Tuesday’s primaries in Illinois, Florida and several other large, delegate-rich states. And Mr. Biden — whose famously tactile campaigning style is off-putting to some and delights others — acknowledged the need for “radical changes in our personal behaviors” that could affect “deeply ingrained behavior like handshakes and hugs.”
An internal campaign memo released Thursday instructed all staff members to begin working from home starting on Saturday, announced the closing of all offices to the public and said that the campaign would “hold smaller events like roundtables, house parties, and press statements, as well as virtual events.” Fund-raisers, the memo said, would “become virtual fund-raisers indefinitely.”
Mr. Sanders likewise canceled a rally in Cleveland on Tuesday, and his campaign has not scheduled any new public events. Jane Sanders, Mr. Sanders’s wife, told reporters on Thursday after he concluded his remarks that he would return to the Senate after the debate, and that he would stay in Washington.
Still, surrogates are continuing to make the rounds in key upcoming contests, and volunteers may be encouraged to head to states like Illinois and Georgia to help with activities like door-knocking, according to Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator and a Biden supporter who has been in touch with the campaign.
The remarks on Thursday were not the first time Mr. Biden has sought to assume the mantle of a sober, statesmanlike leader through a highly produced speech: In January, he delivered a sharp rebuke of Mr. Trump’s stewardship of tensions with Iran against a backdrop that appeared reminiscent of the White House briefing room.
Yet that issue faded from the national forefront, and Mr. Biden went on to a fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses a few weeks later as he competed against what was, at the time, a crowded and competitive Democratic field.
He entered this speech, however, having amassed a big delegate advantage, and facing just one Democratic opponent, Mr. Sanders.
Katie Glueck reported from Wilmington, Del., and Sydney Ember from Burlington, Vt.
March 12, 2020
WILMINGTON, Del. — Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday delivered a forceful rebuke of President Trump’s leadership amid the coronavirus crisis, seeking to project steadiness and resolve from his perch as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In his own speech about the pandemic, Senator Bernie Sanders, Mr. Biden’s main rival, also flamed the president’s response. He provided a long list of policy proposals aimed in particular at helping low-income and working-class families, providing a glimpse of the extraordinary measures he might take if he were president.
“The crisis we face from the coronavirus is on a scale of a major war,” he said at a news conference in Burlington, Vt. “And we must act accordingly.”
Taken together, the candidates’ blistering denunciations of the president’s handling of the outbreak signaled that the coronavirus has fully overtaken the 2020 race, forcing the candidates to cancel events and propose new ways of campaigning, putting fresh political pressure on Mr. Trump, and placing matters of public health and trust at the forefront of the contest.
Mr. Biden, the former vice president, spoke Thursday afternoon from the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Del., about the grave challenges the country faces, and he detailed his ideas for managing the outbreak. He also aimed to draw sharp contrasts with Mr. Trump a day after the president addressed the nation from the Oval Office, establishing a preview of what Mr. Biden hopes will be a general election matchup.
“Unfortunately, this virus laid bare the severe shortcomings of the current administration,” Mr. Biden said, speaking from the hotel where he announced his 1972 bid for the Senate. “Public fears are being compounded by pervasive lack of trust in this president fueled by adversarial relationship with the truth that he continues to have.”
This moment of national anxiety, some of Mr. Biden’s allies believe, throws into sharp relief the choice Americans would face in a general-election matchup between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, and the stakes of that contest. Mr. Biden has been seeking to frame the race as a two-person contest against the president, in ways overt and subtle, even as he continues a primary battle with Mr. Sanders.
In his remarks, Mr. Biden offered his own plan for combating the virus, with proposals that included rapidly and vastly expanding testing — tests, he said, should be available at no charge — moving aggressively to boost hospital capacity and supporting an accelerated push for a vaccine that he said should be “again, free of charge.” And he argued that “the administration’s failure on testing is colossal.
”We are not ready yet, and the clock is ticking,” he warned.
He also described plans to help those who are struggling financially at a time of economic peril, appeared dismissive of corporate tax subsidies and said it was a “national disgrace that millions of our fellow citizens don’t have a single day of paid sick leave.”
If there ever was a time in the modern history of our country when we are all in this together, this is that moment. Now is the time to come together with love and compassion for all, including the most vulnerable people in our society who will face this pandemic from a health perspective or face it from an economic perspective. We are all in this together. Unfortunately in this time of international crisis, it is clear to me at least, that we have an administration that is largely incompetent, and whose incompetence and recklessness have threatened the lives of many, many people in our country. The American people deserve transparency, something that the current administration has fought day after day to stifle. In other words, we need to know what is happening right now in our country, in our states and in fact, all over the world.
Mr. Sanders, for his part, urged the president to declare the pandemic a national emergency, and encouraged the public and private sectors to work together to combat the virus and its effects. Like Mr. Biden, he outlined a list of recommendations to deal with the pandemic, including establishing national and state information hotlines, making all treatment “free of charge,” providing “emergency unemployment assistance” to those who lose their jobs, and expanding the Meals on Wheels and school lunch programs and SNAP “so that no one goes hungry during this crisis.” He also urged a “moratorium on evictions, on foreclosures and on utility shut offs.”
Perhaps above all, he used the health crisis as another opportunity to call for his signature health care plan, “Medicare for all.”
“Our country is at a severe disadvantage compared to every other major country on earth because we do not guarantee health care to all people as a right,” he said.
His remarks amounted to a vigorous critique of Mr. Trump, cloaked in the kind of sweeping, uncompromising proposals that have long defined his democratic socialist agenda. He left the news conference without taking questions.
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| Ms. Anita Dunn will have final decision-making authority. She worked in the Obama White House. |
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MR. Biden's new campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon in 2011. She was a deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s re-election bid.Credit...Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press
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Members included Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon general; Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a prominent oncologist and a vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania; and Lisa Monaco, who served as a homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Mr. Obama. And when he spoke on Thursday, he did so against a backdrop of American flags, reading from teleprompters to the click of cameras and beginning with a nod to his “fellow Americans,” a setting reminiscent of a White House address.
“No president can promise to prevent future outbreaks,” he said. “But I can promise you this. When I’m president, we will be better prepared, respond better and recover better. We’ll lead with science. We’ll listen to the experts. We’ll heed their advice. And we’ll build American leadership and rebuild it to rally the world to meet the global threats.”
Throughout his remarks, Mr. Biden nodded — as he often does — to what he cast as the resiliency and potential of the American people.
Mr. Biden, who is 77, did not stop to take shouted questions about his own health.
He has previously expressed shock and frustration at Mr. Trump’s past skeptical remarks about the severity of the virus, and has sketched out other steps he would take as president to fight it, noting his work as vice president in combating Ebola. Ron Klain, who was Mr. Obama’s Ebola “czar,” is a top Biden adviser.
Mr. Trump’s own somber address Wednesday night, in which he announced he was blocking most travel from continental Europe and promised new aid for workers and businesses, was a break from his previous efforts to play down the effects of the outbreak. But he also mischaracterized some of his administration’s new travel policies and described the threat as a “foreign virus,” though Americans are infected along with many in other countries.
The Trump campaign quickly issued a response to Mr. Biden’s remarks on Thursday. “In times like this, America needs leadership and Biden has shown none,” said Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesman. “President Trump acted early and decisively and has put the United States on stronger footing than other nations. His every move has been aimed at keeping Americans safe, while Joe Biden has sought to capitalize politically and stoke citizens’ fears.”
As for Mr. Sanders, Mr. Murtaugh said in another statement, “He’s just another Democrat candidate for president trying to score political points by recklessly provoking anxiety and fear.” He also argued that the proposal from Mr. Sanders, the Vermont senator — who supports a sweeping single-payer system — would “drive doctors and other medical workers away from the profession, leaving America woefully unprepared for public health emergencies.”
Even as the candidates sought to project images of leadership, they are still politicians who face another debate and another round of primary elections in the coming days, and they are scrambling to adjust to a presidential contest now unfolding amid a pandemic.
In one sign of the major changes the virus is forcing on the presidential race, Mr. Biden’s team on Wednesday announced that previously scheduled campaign events in Chicago and Miami would be transformed into “virtual events” ahead of next Tuesday’s primaries in Illinois, Florida and several other large, delegate-rich states. And Mr. Biden — whose famously tactile campaigning style is off-putting to some and delights others — acknowledged the need for “radical changes in our personal behaviors” that could affect “deeply ingrained behavior like handshakes and hugs.”
An internal campaign memo released Thursday instructed all staff members to begin working from home starting on Saturday, announced the closing of all offices to the public and said that the campaign would “hold smaller events like roundtables, house parties, and press statements, as well as virtual events.” Fund-raisers, the memo said, would “become virtual fund-raisers indefinitely.”
Mr. Sanders likewise canceled a rally in Cleveland on Tuesday, and his campaign has not scheduled any new public events. Jane Sanders, Mr. Sanders’s wife, told reporters on Thursday after he concluded his remarks that he would return to the Senate after the debate, and that he would stay in Washington.
Still, surrogates are continuing to make the rounds in key upcoming contests, and volunteers may be encouraged to head to states like Illinois and Georgia to help with activities like door-knocking, according to Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator and a Biden supporter who has been in touch with the campaign.
The remarks on Thursday were not the first time Mr. Biden has sought to assume the mantle of a sober, statesmanlike leader through a highly produced speech: In January, he delivered a sharp rebuke of Mr. Trump’s stewardship of tensions with Iran against a backdrop that appeared reminiscent of the White House briefing room.
Yet that issue faded from the national forefront, and Mr. Biden went on to a fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses a few weeks later as he competed against what was, at the time, a crowded and competitive Democratic field.
He entered this speech, however, having amassed a big delegate advantage, and facing just one Democratic opponent, Mr. Sanders.
Katie Glueck reported from Wilmington, Del., and Sydney Ember from Burlington, Vt.