Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden knocked President Trump’s campaign for leaving hundreds of supporters stranded for hours in nearly freezing weather conditions after a rally in Omaha, Nebraska.
“It’s an image that captured President Trump’s whole approach to this crisis. He makes a lot of big pronouncements, but they don’t hold up. He gets his photo op, and he gets out,” Biden said Wednesday in Delaware after a COVID-19 briefing.
In contrast with Trump, who predicts that the media coverage of the coronavirus outbreak will subside after the pair’s Nov. 3 election, Biden warned that the country’s recovery may be a protracted process.
“Even if I win, it’s going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic,” the two-term former vice president and 36-year Delaware senator said. “I’m not running on the false promise of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch. But I do promise this: We will start on Day One doing the right things.”
Scores of Trump rallygoers in Omaha had to brave temperatures in the mid-30s on Tuesday night while waiting up to three hours for buses to take them from Eppley Airfield to public parking lots, mostly due to traffic jams.
Trump spokeswoman Samantha Zager told the Washington Examiner that her team “deployed 40 shuttle buses — double the normal allotment — but local road closures and resulting congestion caused delays.”
“At the guest departure location, we had tents, heaters, generators, hot cocoa, and hand warmers available for guests,” she said, catering to an estimated crowd of 25,000.
On Wednesday, Biden followed his brief remarks at Wilmington’s Queen Theater by voting early and in-person at the Carvel Delaware State Building.
After casting his ballot, he commented on the civil unrest in Philadelphia triggered by the police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old black man who refused to drop his knife while experiencing a mental health episode.
Biden said that although protesting was “totally legitimate, totally reasonable,” he urged demonstrators to stop the destruction of property after two nights of looting.
