Trump closes in on Biden in swing states
Joe & O in Mich. as Don does Pa.
President Trump attacked Joe Biden as part of a “corrupt political class” at a Pennsylvania campaign stop on Saturday — while the Democratic nominee and his old boss, former President Barack Obama, double-teamed Trump at a Michigan rally, their first in-person campaign appearance together.
“Everyone knows that Joe Biden is not equipped to lead America,” Trump told a crowd of supporters at Keith House in Bucks County, the Colonial farmhouse where George Washington planned his crossing of the Delaware in 1776.
He pooh-poohed the news that Obama was hitting the trail this weekend.
“I said that’s good, he campaigned for Hillary,” Trump snarked. “How did that work out?”
Obama, at an invitation-only drive-in rally in Flint, mocked Trump’s fondness for huge campaign events as Election Day nears.
“What is his obsession, by the way, with crowd size?” he asked a modest group of supporters seated in their vehicles, who honked their car horns in approval.
“This is the one measure he has of success. Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Is he traumatized?” Obama asked. “Our country is going through a pandemic! That’s not what you’re supposed to be worried about.”
Michigan, which Trump won by just 11,000 votes in 2016, is one of Biden’s top Election Day targets — and despite a 7-point lead in the state, according to RealClearPolitics, the former vice president hauled out his top surrogate on Saturday to try to clinch it.
Obama and Biden’s visits to Flint and to Detroit, the state’s
largest African-American strongholds, reflect nervousness among some Democrats that Trump has made inroads among black voters, whose early-voting turnout has been low.
“The Biden campaign is worried that the Trump campaign will peel off some of the African-American vote,” a senior Democratic Party insider told The Post. “They may peel off more than logic should allow.”
Both Biden and Obama focused heavily on the coronavirus, accusing Trump of mishandling a pandemic that is blamed for nearly 230,000 deaths.
“His closing argument this week is that the press and people are too focused on COVID,” Obama said. “‘COVID, COVID, COVID,’ he’s complaining. He’s jealous of COVID’s media coverage!”
“Imagine where we’d be if we had a president who wore a mask instead of mocking it,” Biden said in a heated, 22-minute speech. “What makes it go away is if he goes away.”
Trump, meanwhile, argued that Biden’s support for lockdowns and school closures to combat the virus’ spread are untenable.
“That’s his only plan, make you a prisoner of your home, a prisoner in your own country,” he said. “A child in a classroom cannot be replaced by a computer.”
He added, “Draconian lockdowns do not stop the virus.”
Biden waxed nostalgic about the Obama presidency.
“Kind of reminds you of how good it can be, listening to him, doesn’t it?” Biden said after Obama introduced him.
The ex-veep touched only briefly on Trump’s accusations of corruption against him and son Hunter Biden.
“Eight years without one single trace of scandal,” he said of the Obama-Biden administration. “It’s going to be nice to return to that.”
By the end of a rollicking day of campaigning, the candidates — both in their 70s — had each joked about beating each other up.
“He’s not a big guy,” Trump said of Biden. “A slight slap, you wouldn’t have to close your fist.”
“When you were in high school,” Biden told his Flint audience of Trump, “wouldn’t you have liked to take a shot?”
First Lady Melania Trump teased Biden for his passive campaign schedule.
“When you hide in a basement, you feel safe communicating your wishful thinking,” she said at a rare appearance in another battleground state, Wisconsin. “I watch Donald continue to work hard to keep people informed and calm, to protect our economy and make hard and unpopular decisions to do all he could to keep us all safe.”
Trump told supporters in Reading, the second of four stops Saturday in critical Pennsylvania: “You are so lucky that we took this journey together. Pennsylvania, you are so lucky. You better get out and vote on Tuesday.”