In the first of a series of promised policy addresses, Joe Biden accused President Trump of cronyism as his administration tries to boost big companies and small businesses struggling through the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re already seeing the telltale hallmarks of ‘Trumponomics’ in the way he is implementing the crisis response efforts: no strings, no oversight, no accountability,” Biden said during an economy-focused speech streamed online via NowThis.
Describing the White House’s economic reaction as “the corrupt recovery,” he alluded to Monty Bennett, a Dallas hotel executive and major Trump donor who received a total of $59 million from the small-business lending package known as the Paycheck Protection Program for the Ashford Group. The bailout loan has since been returned.
“He’s going to pick his wealthy friends, his corporate cronies over working families every time. I say it’s time we pick a different way,” he added.
Leaning into his middle-class message, Biden slammed Trump’s adoption of a Republican playbook that was “hollowing out the good economy we had left him long before the first case of the coronavirus.”
Biden also referenced the Labor Department reporting Friday morning that 20.5 million jobs were lost last month as the virus forces businesses to keep their doors closed or to operate at minimized capacities. The restrictions caused unemployment to spike to 14.7% in April, up from 4.4% in March, the highest rate since the Great Depression, creating a landscape Biden called “an economic disaster.”
“It didn’t have to be this way. Donald Trump utterly failed to prepare us for this pandemic,” he said.
Friday’s livestream, again shot outside his Delaware home, went more smoothly than his first virtual rally on Thursday night. The earlier event was hampered by technological difficulties, including Biden not knowing he had been introduced and was being broadcast to the audience. Biden wore a mask at the beginning of his Friday speech, in contrast to Trump, who refuses to don face protections.
