Biden visits battleground states, expands staff
ROSE VALLEY, Pennsylvania, March 9, (AP): Fresh off his defiant State of the Union address, President Joe Biden on Friday laced into former President Donald Trump - by name this time as he and his senior aides began barnstorming the country to aggressively sell his vision for a second term to voters.
The president is trying to ride the post-speech momentum to Pennsylvania and Georgia for campaign events in two critical battleground states that he flipped in 2020 and is hoping to keeping in his column this November. He arrived at a private home in the pivotal Philadelphia suburbs along with his wife, Jill Biden, to hold what his campaign billed as a “kitchen table” conversation with brothers Jack and David Cunicelli, the owners of 320 Market Cafe, and their families ahead of remarks to supporters at the local middle school. He’ll move on to New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan next week.
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Biden’s reelection campaign was almost giddy after the speech, vowing to stay on the offensive against Trump. Introducing her husband at Strath Haven Middle School, Jill Biden said, “Last night, Joe showed the world what I see every day.”
While Biden had referred only to his “predecessor” during Thursday’s speech before Congress, on Friday it was a different story on the campaign trail, as Biden and his wife laid into Trump for raising the deficit, rolling back abortion access and fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.
He also blamed Trump for the coarsening of the country’s political discourse.
“When you ride down the street and there’s a Trump banner with an F-U on it and a little 6-year-old kid putting up his middle finger,” Biden said. “Did you ever think you’d hear people talk the way they do? It demeans who we are. That’s not America.”
Biden highlighted threats to in vitro fertilization in Alabama after a recent state Supreme Court ruling. “You know why it happened? I’ll tell you why. One
reason: Donald Trump,” Biden said.
And Biden criticized Trump for sowing doubts about America’s commitments to its NATO allies and for hosting Hungary’s Victor Orban at his Florida estate on Friday. “You know who he’s meeting with today down in Mar-a-Lago? Orban of Hungary, who’s stated flatly that he doesn’t thinks democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship. Only member of NATO. That’s who he’s meeting with,” Biden said.
“I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it.”
Jill Biden called Trump “dangerous,” said “he mocks women’s bodies and devalues our existence” and added, “And we can’t let him win.”
Biden joked that he got his “usual warm reception” from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia, who heckled Biden to address the death of Laken Riley, a nursing student from Georgia. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the US illegally has been arrested and charged with Riley’s murder.
The president’s campaign announced Friday that he and Vice President Kamala Harris will visit every major swing state in coming days, while launching a $30 million, six-week advertising campaign on TV and digital platforms designed to highlight key themes from the State of the Union to Black, Asian and Hispanic communities.