Joe Biden’s campaign said that he supports President Trump’s decision to implement travel restrictions from China in response to concerns about the coronavirus and denied that he called the move xenophobic.
“Joe Biden supports travel bans that are guided by medical experts, advocated by public health officials, and backed by a full strategy,” deputy Biden campaign manager Kate Bedingfeld told CNN. “Science supported this ban. Therefore, he did too.”
The support for the travel ban comes weeks after Trump and his allies repeatedly asserted that Biden called Trump’s China travel restrictions xenophobic. Others pointed out that Biden did not explicitly call the policy itself xenophobic.
On Jan. 31, the day that Trump implemented the travel restrictions, the former vice president said at a town hall in Iowa: “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia, hysterical xenophobia, and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
Biden’s “reference to xenophobia was about Trump’s long record of scapegoating others at a time when the virus was emerging from China,” Bedingfield said, not to the travel restriction.
In a March 24 CNN interview, Biden did not directly refute Trump’s assertion that Biden called Trump’s Chinese travel restrictions xenophobic.
He was shown a clip in which Trump said: “I made a decision to close off to China. That was weeks early. And, honestly, I took a lot of heat. Sleepy Joe Biden said, it is xenophobic. I don’t know if he knows what that means, but that’s OK.”
“What a piece of work,” Biden responded, brushing off Trump’s comment.
