Donald Trump says Biden family is a ‘criminal enterprise’

Donald Trump has branded Joe Biden a “criminal” and suggested authorities should lock “him up”, reviving a chant previously directed at Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump has branded Joe Biden a “criminal” and suggested authorities should lock “him up”, reviving a controversial campaign rally chant previously directed at 2016 rival Hillary Clinton.

The US President has seized on allegedly corrupt overseas business dealings involving Mr Biden’s son Hunter Biden, revealed in a trove of emails and other documents obtained from an abandoned laptop, as first reported by the New York Post last week.

In a marathon, nearly two-hour Sunday evening rally in Carson City, Nevada, Mr Trump repeatedly slammed his Democratic rival as “corrupt”. At one point, he corrected the audience as they began chanting “lock her up”, in reference to Mrs Clinton.

“No, ‘him up’,” Mr Trump said. “You see what’s happening? He’s a corrupt politician.”

Mr Trump said that as far as he was concerned, “the Biden family is a criminal enterprise”.

“They found the laptop. You know what they call that? The laptop from hell. That’s a laptop from hell. Let’s see what happens with it,” he said.

“A giant trove of emails show Hunter Biden making deals, setting up meetings with his father Joe and using the office of the Vice President for a for-profit cash machine. That’s what it is. This guy’s a vacuum cleaner, he follows his father around, takes millions, hundreds of millions and billions out of these countries. That is so dishonest. I call him the human vacuum cleaner.”

Mr Trump talked for nearly two hours. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Mr Biden has repeatedly insisted he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings”.

“Joe Biden said he knew nothing but he lied,” Mr Trump said. “I’m telling you this laptop is a disaster.”

He added that the “fake news and big tech don’t want to write about it”, referring to Twitter and Facebook’s controversial decision to censor the story – a move slammed by Republicans as “election interference”.

“They don’t want to write about or report on the scandal because they want Biden to win,” Mr Trump said.

“I’m not just running against Biden, I’m running against the left-wing media, big tech giants and a corrupt political establishment.”

He claimed his rival was “far more corrupt than Hunter because Joe’s getting a piece of everything – 10 per cent, 50 per cent”.

“(The media) see what’s going on, everyone’s looking, and all we’re hearing is, ‘You can’t talk about this.’ Can you imagine if that were Don Trump Jr’s laptop, or Eric Trump? These are good kids but they have been brutalised by these maniacs,” he said.

A relaxed-looking Mr Trump spent considerably more time than usual off his teleprompter speech on Sunday, including one lengthy aside on his administration’s order to relax environmental standards to allow greater water pressure for bathrooms and kitchens.

“You know what bothers me? The ‘restrictor’,” he said.

“Me, I want that hair to be so beautiful. I go into these new hotels, and I get in, I can look at it and say, ‘Oh, here we go.’ You turn on the water, drip, drip, drip. Now, you go into the shower and the water pours out. You go into the sink, you can wash your hands very nicely.”

Mr Trump’s water comments spurred from a discussion of California’s water rationing, which he has previously labelled “insane”.

At another point, he also discussed the woman who went viral for complimenting his smile at the NBC town hall last Thursday.

Donald Trump has mocked Hunter Biden’s ‘laptop from hell’.

Paulette Dale subsequently told the Miami New Times that she planned to vote for Mr Biden, saying she wished Mr Trump would “smile more and talk less” and that she was “not a fan”.

“After the show she went rogue,” Mr Trump said. “I’m sure that the Democrats hit her very hard and she got back in line, but I think hopefully her first statement was the statement she believed – he’s a handsome man.”

He added, “See, now the fake news will say ‘President Trump went on a rant talking about how handsome he is. It was a terrible thing. We don’t think he’s handsome.’”

He also attempted to contrast his own administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic with Mr Biden’s proposals.

While the death toll in the US has now passed 220,000, Mr Trump again said the country was “rounding the turn”, “with or without” a coronavirus vaccine.

“If you vote for Biden he will surrender your jobs to China, surrender your future to the virus,” Mr Trump said.

“He still wants to lock down. He’ll ‘listen to the scientists’. If I listened totally to the scientists we would have a country right now in a massive depression. (But) we’re like a rocket ship, that’s despite like five or six of these Democrats keeping their states closed because they’re trying to hurt us.”

Mr Trump, who predicted a “red wave” despite significantly trailing Mr Biden in the polls, said the November 3 election would be “a choice between a Trump super recovery, which we’re in right now, or a Biden depression”.

“They’re getting a little worried – they know we’re going to have a big red wave, they know it, these fakers back there they know it, all you have to do is look at this crowd,” he said.

“There’s even more enthusiasm now than we had four years ago. Actually it’s hard to believe, and I’ll say it for the fake news, by a lot.”