Bernie Sanders’s campaign is warning Democrats that Joe Biden is vulnerable to attacks from President Trump, but his team skipped over one obvious weakness: Hunter Biden.
“Donald Trump tonight sent a warning shot to our party: If we nominate a candidate like Joe Biden who has repeatedly tried to cut Social Security and pushed disastrous trade deals, Trump will exploit that vulnerability in an effort to obscure his own record and win the battleground states that could swing the general election,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir wrote after Trump’s Fox News town hall Thursday.
The Sanders camp’s push to paint the Vermont senator as the “far stronger general election candidate” was sparked by Trump saying during the televised event that he “will be cutting” entitlement programs if elected to a second term in office. The president also ripped Biden over the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he described as “the worst trade deal ever made.”
“Joe Biden made a deal, NAFTA. He approved it. He was pushing it,” Trump said.
Yet Sanders, who is now second in the Democratic White House race’s delegate count, missed the Hunter Biden attack line Trump already previewed on Fox News the night before. Trump told the network the younger Biden’s employment with Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings would be “a major issue in the campaign.”
“I will bring that up all the time because I don’t see any way out. I don’t see any way out for them. I don’t see how they can answer those questions. Maybe they can, I hope they can. I’d actually prefer it that they can, but I don’t believe they will be able to answer those questions. That was purely corrupt,” he said.
Hunter Biden’s $50,000-a-month role with Burisma is the subject of a Senate Homeland Security Committee investigation after Trump’s interest in his work with the Ukrainian oligarch-linked firm sparked impeachment proceedings in the House. The younger Biden had no prior experience in the energy sector.
Sanders’s positioning against Joe Biden capped a day in which the pair went back-and-forth on Twitter over Social Security.
[Also read: Romney: GOP investigation into Hunter Biden and Burisma ‘appears political’]
Here’s the deal: Joe Biden has repeatedly advocated for cuts to Social Security. I’ve fought my whole career to protect and expand it. https://t.co/l9TW9nGXeM
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 6, 2020
Get real, Joe. One of us has a history of not only fighting cuts to Social Security but working to expand benefits. And that’s why we are the campaign best positioned to defeat Donald Trump. https://t.co/WyQfY5IQyi
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 6, 2020
The rivals will next go head-to-head in a multistate contest on Tuesday, when voters in states such as Michigan will weigh in on the primary.
