US elections: Biden, Obama slam Trump for coronavirus policies and racism

Former US President Barack Obama and current presidential candidate Joe Biden lashed out at President Donald Trump in a video released Thursday, accusing the incumbent president of dividing Americans.

“I don’t understand his inability to get a sense of what people are going through. He just can’t relate in any way,” Biden said during a prerecorded video where he and Obama spoke about their time at the White House.

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Obama spoke of his confidence and backing for Biden, who he said, “would actually listen to the experts and pay attention to the science,” when dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

Both men defended the pandemic office set up by Obama and Biden said there “were 44 people in China,” to be able to identify and deal with outbreaks early on.

“Can you imagine standing up when you were president and saying, ‘It’s not my responsibility, I take no responsibility’?” Biden said, offering a line of attack similar to his recent campaign speeches when he asserted that Trump “quit” on the country and has “waved the white flag” in the pandemic.

Biden, who repeatedly referred to Trump as “this guy,” also accused Trump of racism.

“This guy has generated a sense out there that people are waking up to that he ran by deliberately dividing people from the moment he came down that escalator, and I think people are now going, ‘I don’t want my kid growing up that way,’” Biden said, recalling Trump’s 2016 campaign launch.”

Referring to the recent anti-racism protests across the US, Biden and Obama said they did not ignore the realities of racism when they served in office.

“It all starts with being able to relate [to the people],” Obama told Biden. The former president said that Biden would reassemble the kind of government that cares about people and brings people together.

He added that Biden had the “decency and understanding” of what people in America need.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the Republican National Committee issued a scathing assessment of “slickly produced, substance-free love fests,” dubbing the effort “Biden and Obama’s fiction.”

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- With AP