Biden promotes plan to lower housing costs while courting Latino voters in Nevada, Arizona
PHOENIX — President Joe Biden sought personally Tuesday to re-engage voters in Nevada and Arizona who helped power his winning coalition in 2020 by drawing contrasts with Republican challenger Donald Trump on veterans, job creation, foreign policy and other issues.
Mr. Biden told supporters at a campaign office in Reno, Nev., that he and Mr. Trump have a “different value set” and he criticized Trump for comments he’s made about veterans and others.
“I never heard a president say the things that he has said,” Mr. Biden said. He said millions of jobs disappeared during Mr. Trump’s presidency and that the Republican doesn’t understand foreign policy or U.S. national security needs.
Mr. Biden said Washoe County, where Reno is located, and Nevada are “really, really, really critical” for the November election. Nevada is among the roughly half-dozen battlegrounds that will determine the next president, and Washoe is the lone swing county in the state.
“We’re going to beat him again,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump.
Afterward, Mr. Biden flew to Las Vegas to promote his administration’s housing policies, including new proposals to eliminate various fees to lower costs for homeowners and renters. He also called on the National Association of Realtors to follow through on a recent agreement to allow home buyers and sellers to negotiate commissions lower than the customary 5% to 6%.
Mr. Biden arrived in Phoenix later Tuesday for a second campaign appearance in a critical swing county and event Wednesday to discuss his support of the computer chip manufacturing sector.
The Reno appearance coincided with the launch of Latinos con Biden-Harris (Spanish for Latinos with Biden-Harris). Campaign ads ran in English, Spanish and Spanglish, a blend of the two languages, as did two Spanish-language radio interviews with the president.
Mr. Biden is also emphasizing his pro-union, pro-abortion rights message during the trip.
“The Latino community is critical to the value set we have,” Mr. Biden said on “El Bueno, la Mala y el Feo” (“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”) on Univision Radio. “I plan on working like the devil to earn your support.”
In the interview, Mr. Biden turned questions about immigration into an indictment of Mr. Trump for calling migrants “animals” and saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. Mr. Biden also noted Mr. Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations if given another term.
“We have to stop this guy; we can’t let this happen,” Mr. Biden said. “We are a nation of immigrants.”