Trump turns news briefing into quasirally

WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump used a White House media event on China yesterday to excoriate his expected Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden, in a rambling diatribe that turned the Rose Garden setting into a substitute rally venue, minus his supporters.

The Republican president, who trails Biden in national opinion polls, has chafed at his inability to hold large political gatherings because of the Covid19 pandemic.

On a day when Biden unveiled a $US2 trillion ($NZ3.05 trillion) climate plan during a speech in Delaware, Trump took to a podium outside the Oval Office and, after announcing moves to punish China for its treatment of Hong Kong, criticised the former vicepresident and sought to draw a distinction between their two candidacies.

‘‘Today, Joe Biden gave a speech in which he said that the core of his economic agenda is a hardleft crusade against American energy.

‘‘He wants to kill American energy,’’ Trump said.

Biden’s plan, which would seek to cut carbon emissions from electrical power production to zero in 15 years, signified a more aggressive approach on climate policy than he adopted during the Democratic presidential nominating race.

Trump sought to deflect attention from his administration’s teetering coronavirus response by claiming things would have been much worse if Biden was in charge.

‘‘If we had listened to Joe Biden, hundreds of thousands of additional lives would have been lost,’’ he said.

More than 136,000 Americans have died from Covid19 on Trump’s watch — the worst death toll in the world.

Trump dedicated part of his freewheeling speech to his baseless charge that mailin voting will lead to ‘‘tremendous fraud’’ in the presidential election.

There is no evidence to back up Trump’s claims about mailin voting. — Reuters/TCA