Presumed 2020 Democratic president nominee Joe Biden has offered to call President Trump to “discuss a strategy to combat the coronavirus pandemic rocking the nation” Fox News has learned.
“Vice President Biden has been extending his advice for months, and he did so again on the air last night,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield told Fox News. “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.”
Advice? Is she joking? It took me a minute, but it became clear to me that this offer was an April Fool’s joke. Think about it. Joe Biden has been conducting his own “shadow briefings” to explain how he would respond to the coronavirus. Typically, he takes things Trump has already done, accuses Trump of not doing those things, presents them as his own ideas, and then accuses Trump of being slow to respond to the coronavirus even though Biden’s “advice” has typically lagged days, if not weeks behind what Trump and his administration has already done.
Just over two weeks ago, Joe Biden released his plan to combat the coronavirus and was almost point for point a list of things already done by Trump and his administration. He’s kept at it, while also claiming that he, not Trump would be best to lead the country through a pandemic. Of course, the most significant thing that distinguishes what Trump has done vs. what Biden says he would have done is that Trump banned travel with China to slow the spread of the virus in the United States. That decision saved thousands of lives according to World Health Organization experts, but Joe Biden called it “xenophobic” and “fearmongering.”
So, Biden clearly has no business suggesting he has anything worthwhile to offer in terms of combating the coronavirus. That’s why the offer must have been an April Fool’s Day joke. If by chance it was a serious offer, then it tells you just how desperate Biden is to get press these days.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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