Biden: Trump terrified, panicking
NEW YORK: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign says President Donald Trump’s misleading new television ad is proof that Trump is “in a panic” and knows Biden “would beat him like a drum.”
Biden’s 2020 campaign issued a statement Friday (Saturday in Manila) responding to news that Trump is spending $8 million on an ad highlighting the former vice president’s work fighting corruption in Ukraine.
The ad campaign, which includes an additional $2 million from the Republican National Committee targeting Democrats in key districts, come as Trump fends off an impeachment probe by House Democrats after a whistleblower’s complaint accused Trump of repeatedly pressing Ukraine’s leaders to investigate Biden and his son Hunter.
The Trump ad highlights Biden’s efforts to make US aid to Ukraine contingent on that country firing its chief prosecutor and claims that the fired prosecutor was investigating Hunter Biden.
It also accuses Democrats of trying to “steal the 2020 election” by impeaching Trump. But in fact, the prosecutor had failed to pursue any major anti-corruption investigations, leaving Ukraine’s international donors deeply frustrated.
In pressing for the prosecutor’s ouster, Biden was representing the official position of the US government, which was shared by other Western allies and many in Ukraine.
Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in the statement that the new ad campaign is proof that Trump is “in a panic.”
She said Trump “is trying to pick his opponent, and he will fail. Donald Trump is terrified of Joe Biden because the Vice President would beat him like a drum.”
Trump has consistently trailed Biden in hypothetical head- tohead polls this year.
In related development, House Democrats took their first concrete steps in the impeachment investigation of Trump on Friday, issuing subpoenas demanding documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and scheduling legal depositions for other State Department officials.
At the end of a stormy week of revelation and recrimination, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi framed the impeachment inquiry as a somber moment for a divided nation.
“This is no cause for any joy,” she said on MSNBC.
At the White House, a senior administration official confirmed a key detail from the unidentified CIA whistleblower who has accused Trump of abusing the power of his office.
Trump, for his part, insisted anew that his actions and words have been “perfect” and the whistleblower’s complaint might well be the work of “a partisan operative.”
The White House acknowledged that a record of the Trump phone call that is now at the center of the impeach- ment inquiry had been sealed away in a highly classified system at the direction of Trump’s National Security Council lawyers.
Separately, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters that the whistleblower “has protection under the law,” something Trump himself had appeared to question earlier in the day. He suggested then that his accuser “isn’t a whistleblower at all.”
Still at issue is why the rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president was put on “lock down,” in the words of the whistleblower.
The CIA officer said that diverting the record in an unusual way was evidence that “White House officials under- stood the gravity of what had transpired” in the conversation.
The whistleblower complaint alleges that Trump used his office to “solicit interference from a foreign country” to help himself in next year’s US election.
In the phone call, days after ordering a freeze to some military assistance for Ukraine, Trump prodded new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to dig for potentially damaging material on Democratic rival Joe Biden and volunteered the assistance of both his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and US Attorney General William Barr.
Pelosi refused to set a deadline for the probe but promised to act “expeditiously.”
The House intelligence committee could draw members back to Washington next week.