Joe Biden ‘can’t put two sentences together’, Donald Trump claims
As new polls show Joe Biden stretching his lead, Donald Trump steps up the attack on his presidential rival.
Donald Trump has sharply stepped up his attacks on Joe Biden, describing him as “mentally shot” as new polls show his Democratic presidential rival stretching his lead as the coronavirus surges across the US.
In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News, Mr Trump played down the dangers posed by the pandemic and portrayed Mr Biden as a prisoner of the radical left who was too old and incompetent to lead the nation.
“Biden can’t put two sentences together. They wheel him out. He goes up — he repeats — they ask him questions. He reads a teleprompter and then he goes back into his basement,” Mr Trump said.
“You know why I won’t lose? Because the country in the end, they’re not going to have a man … who’s shot. He’s shot, he’s mentally shot.
“Let Biden sit through an interview like this, he’ll be on the ground crying for mommy. He’ll say ‘mommy, mommy, please take me home’.”
His comments follow new polls that show that the 77-year-old Mr Biden has increased his lead over the 74-year-old president with less than four months until the November 3 election.
A major new poll by Washington Post/ABC News found the former vice president has a sizeable 15 point lead over Mr Trump, 55 per cent to 40 per cent, up from 10 points in late May.
NEW @ABC/@washingtonpost poll shows @JoeBiden leading @realDonaldTrump by 15 points among registered voters and 10 points among likely voters
— Johnny Verhovek (@JTHVerhovek) July 19, 2020
Registered voters
Biden: 55%
Trump: 40%
Likely voters:
Biden 54%
Trump: 44%https://t.co/KcfTJGFeiT
Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s approval rating has dived to just 39 per cent from 48 per cent in May with his disapproval rating jumping from 46 to 57 per cent.
Mr Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has been widely criticised, appears to be the main trigger for his fall in support, with only 38 per cent approving of the president’s handling of the pandemic with 60 per cent disapproving.
It comes as new virus cases continue to rise in more than 40 US states and surge across the south and west of the country.
In the country’s new coronavirus hotspot of Florida, 12,478 new cases were recorded, the fifth straight day above 10,000, as the state had another 78 deaths, taking its total to almost 5000.
Mr Trump used the interview to play down the danger posed by the recent spikes, saying many of the new cases were the result of extra testing and that mostly younger people were now catching COVID-19.
“If we didn’t test, you wouldn’t be able to show that chart. If we tested half as much, those numbers would be down,” Mr Trump said. He did not address the fact that the increase in new virus cases was much higher than the increased rate of testing.
“Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. Many of them — don’t forget, I guess it’s like 99.7 per cent, people are going to get better and in many cases they’re going to get better very quickly.”
Mr Trump also described the country’s chief infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci as “a little bit of an alarmist” who had made mistakes during the pandemic.
But the president denied a rift with the scientist despite the White House last week leaking briefing notes against Dr Fauci and Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro writing a critical op-ed about him.
Mr Trump said he would leave it to state governors to decide whether face masks should be worn to protect against the virus, as rules on masks differed widely in different parts of the country.
Mr Trump said he did not believe he was losing to Mr Biden in the polls, describing them as “fake polls” which were incorrect just like they were in 2016 when they predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton.
Mr Trump said the economy was coming back strongly and was now “expanding and growing beautifully”. He said the stock market was also coming back strongly and was close to a return to an all time high.
By contrast, he said his Democratic opponent wanted to introduce a high taxing, far left agenda typical of the socialist dictatorship in Venezuela.
The hard truth is that it didn’t have to be this bad, but Donald Trump ignored the experts and refused to take action. He has failed our nation. pic.twitter.com/WAhigUtsxz
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 19, 2020
“Biden wants to come in and ruin our country, triple your taxes. He wants to add regulations that I’ve cut. He will destroy this country, but it won’t be him, it will be the radical left,’ he said.
Mr Trump also hit out at cancel culture, saying he saw the issue of the Confederate Flag as a question of freedom of speech.
“When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the south, they like the south. People right now like the south. I’d say it’s freedom of, of, of many things, but it’s freedom of speech,” he said.
“You know, the whole thing with cancel culture, we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the north and the south fought. We have to remember that, otherwise we’ll end up fighting again.”
The president also hit out at his niece Mary Trump over her tell-all book about the Trump family which was highly critical of Mr Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr, who she portrayed as a “win at all costs” bully.
“My father was — he was tough, he was tough on me, he was tough on all of the kids. But tough in a … in a solid sense, in a really good sense. For her to say — I think the word she used was psychopath — what a disgrace. She ought to be ashamed of herself. That book is a lie.”
Ms Trump’s book, Too Much is Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, sold almost 1 million copies on the first day it was released last week.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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