Biden pressed to prove he can handle attacks
SIOUX CITY, Iowa — With five days until the Iowa caucuses, Joe Biden is fending off a new onslaught of GOP attacks over his son’s business overseas and facing piling pressure to show Democratic voters he can handle the incoming.
As Republicans amplified their allegations against the former vice president, accusing him of nepotism and worse in a series of charges stemming from the impeachment trial of President Trump, Biden mounted an aggressive counterattack ahead of Monday’s first nominating contest.
“Character is on the ballot. America’s character,” Biden says in remarks prepared for an event Thursday in Waukee. “I don’t believe we’re the dark, angry nation we see in Donald
Trump’s tweets.”
Biden made his case Wednesday by openly mocking Florida Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican, for running a digital ad in Iowa that repeats Trump’s discredited theories about Biden’s work in Ukraine as vice president and his son’s private business dealings there. The ad came a day after Trump’s impeachment defense team repeatedly framed Hunter Biden’s tenure on an energy firm’s governing board as the real corruption in need of investigation.
“A senator from Florida, sitting in Washington, has decided to start running negative ads against Joe Biden just days before the Iowa caucus,” the elder Biden told several hundred Iowa voters in Sioux City. “What do you think that’s about? Look, it’s simple,” he said, returning to an oftused line: “They’re smearing me … because they know if I’m the nominee, I’m going to beat Donald Trump like a drum.”