Trump cops a roast

Democrat hopefuls slam president’s comments on shootings

FORMER US vice president Joe Biden and Montana Governor Steve Bullock opened the Iowa State Fair’s 2020 presidential blitz by blistering President Donald Trump and promising to push new gun restrictions.

“I believe everything the president’s said and done encourages white supremacists,” Mr Biden said as Mr Trump continued to take criticism for his handling of back-to-back mass shootings.

One of the shooters is believed to have written a racist screed echoing some of Mr Trump’s incendiary language about immigrants.

Mr Bullock said Mr Trump’s rhetoric and behaviour – attacking critics on the day he travelled to ostensibly console victims’ families in Texas and Ohio – were beneath the office he holds.

“The lies and the statements that divide us by race, gender, geography – we expect more out of our preschoolers now than we do the president of the United States,” Mr Bullock said.

Mr Biden and Mr Bullock are the first of more than 20 candidates – nearly all Democrats – who will speak at the Iowa fairgrounds in coming days. It’s a rite of passage for would-be presidents and for Democrats it highlights challenges in a state like Iowa, a presidential battleground that mixes cultural conservatives and farm country, liberal college towns and swing voters.

Mr Trump won Iowa comfortably in 2016 after then president Barack Obama, with Mr Biden as his running mate, won the state twice.

The typical Democratic caucus electorate, meanwhile, leans far more liberal than the general electorate. Mr Biden and Mr Bullock promised to compete both for caucus votes and for the state in November.

“If we can’t win back places we lost ... if we can’t give people a reason to vote for us and not just against him, Donald Trump will win again,” Mr Bullock said.