Biden spars with Trump on age, faces questions on women
WASHINGTON: Newly announced 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden faced scrutiny on multiple fronts, as President Donald Trump knocked him for his age and an all-female panel questioned his past treatment of women.
It was unlikely the rollout that the former vice president had expected on the first full day of his White House campaign, but the attention from Trump himself served to signal Biden’s status as the leading challenger in a crowded field seeking to oust the current president.
Biden’s day in the public eye began with the 72-year-old Trump opening a fresh line of attack on his rival’s age, saying Biden made him “look very young” by comparison.
“I’m the youngest person. I am a young, vibrant man,” a smiling Trump told reporters at the White House.
“I look at Joe, I don’t know about him,” he said of Biden, who is 76 and would be the oldest person ever to serve as president.
“I would never say anyone is too old, but I know they’re all making me look very young both in terms of age and I think in terms of energy.”
Biden, speaking on ABC’s popular talk show “The View,” acknowledged politics is a “showme business” where voters assess not just a candidate’s political platform, but his physical fitness for office.
“If he looks young and vibrant compared to me I should probably go home,” Biden said of the president.
Trump is technically obese, has a penchant for fast food and avoids strenuous exercise.
His doctor declared him healthy in February.
Keen to paint Biden as unfit for the job, he has nicknamed his potential rival ‘Sleepy Joe’.
Biden presented himself as a vigorous candidate, insisting he was more like ‘hyper Joe’.
When he was asked how he would beat Biden, whose working class appeal could help win back states Trump snatched in 2016, the president was succinct: “I think we beat him easily.”
Biden’s opening campaign message Thursday featured a direct challenge to Trump’s fitness for office, as he blasted his response to deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
On Friday it was Biden on the back foot, as he faced awkward questions about his past actions – and stopped short of making outright apologies for them.
Multiple women have accused Biden this year of touching them inappropriately in the past.
Biden’s team was quick to refocus attention on the positive, announcing he raked in US$6.3 million in the first 24 hours of the campaign, outpacing all other Democratic contenders on their opening days. — AFP LOS ANGELES: A California man who deliberately drove into a crowd of people, injuring eight, did so because he thought they were Muslim, police said.
The driver, 34-year-old Isaiah Peoples, reportedly targeted the family solely on their appearance, according to police in Sunnyvale, near San Francisco, who are now treating the case as a ‘hate crime’.
“There is new evidence that Peoples intentionally targeted victims based on their race and belief that they were Muslim,” said Sunnyvale Public Security in a statement.
According to local media, three members of the same family are among the eight pedestrians injured Tuesday – a father and his son and daughter.
The nationality and religion of the family have not been released.
A lawyer for Peoples said the incident “was clearly the result of a mental disorder”, and he would seek psychiatric treatment for his client – who he described as a military veteran possibly suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. — AFP