CAMPAIGN 2020 Biden hammers Trump over dig at fallen soldiers
TAMPA, Fla. — Joe Biden is tearing into President Trump for his reported remarks referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers” during a Tuesday campaign visit to the key battleground state of Florida.
“Nowhere are his faults more glaring and more offensive, to me at least, than when it comes to his denigration of our service members, veterans, wounded warriors who have fallen,” Biden said at a campaign event with veterans in the Tampa area.
It marked Biden’s latest reaction on remarks, sourced anonymously and first reported in the Atlantic, describing offensive comments by the president toward fallen and captured U.S. service members, including calling World War I dead at an American military cemetery in France “losers” and “suckers” in 2018.
Trump has denied the remarks. But the reported comments, many of which were confirmed independently by several news outlets, have given Biden an opening to press what Democrats believe may be an opening among veteran voters and military families, who broadly supported Trump in 2016.
During the Tuesday event, Biden spoke about his son Beau, who served in the Delaware National Guard and died of a brain tumor in 2015.
“He’s gone now, but he’s no sucker,” Biden said.
Biden spoke about his experience as vice president escorting military caskets home and working on military issues, and about his own commitments to strengthen the Veterans Administration and tackle the mental health crisis among veterans. And he attacked Trump for what he said were failed promises to veterans.
“President Trump likes to say he passed VA Choice, but just like everything else he seems to say, it’s a figment of his imagination or a flatout lie,” he said, referencing a program passed under the Obama administration that steers more patients to the private sector.
The event kicked off Biden’s first trip to Florida as the Democratic presidential nominee on Tuesday. Later in the day, Biden was scheduled to hold a Hispanic Heritage Month kickoff event in Kissimmee, near Orlando, as part of an urgent mission to build support among Latinos, who could decide the election in one of the nation’s fiercest battleground states.
In a state where elections are often decided by a percentage point, there are mounting concerns that Biden may be slipping, particularly with the state’s influential Latino voters.