Joe Biden denounced President Trump for an awkward exchange he had with a CBS reporter of Asian decent over China and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“You deserve better than a president who aggressively and childishly insults [an] Asian American reporter,” Biden said Monday. “Think of that. President of the United States, the whole world to see, assaults an Asian American reporter in the Rose Garden for doing her job asking a direct question.”
The presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee accused Trump of “never, ever [missing] an opportunity to stoke innuendo, to fan the flames of hate” during an appearance at a virtual AAPI Victory Fund event Monday. The super PAC is trying to mobilize Asian American Democrats ahead of November’s general election.
Biden’s comments referred to one of a handful of uncomfortable moments Trump shared with CBS reporter Weijia Jiang during his once-daily COVID-19 press briefings. Earlier this month, Trump told Jiang to “go ask China” about why he sees the U.S. virus response as a “global competition” against other countries. His remarks were widely slammed as racist.
Yet Biden’s team last week was similarly ripped for attacking another CBS reporter. Spokesman Andrew Bates called Catherine Herridge, a senior investigative correspondent, “a partisan, rightwing hack” for her work covering the Obama administration’s investigation of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
On Monday, Biden laced his criticism of the Trump White House amid the outbreak with the word “xenophobic.” The pair previously clashed over claims the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator used the term to describe Trump’s China travel ban.
Blaming Trump’s slow reaction for exacerbating the death count, Biden said instead of urging state and local officials, as well as everyday Americans, to act quickly to stop the spread of the novel illness “we got the denials, delays, distraction, many of which were nakedly xenophobic.”
China has become a wedge issue for both Trump and Biden as part of their respective campaigns.
The president has pegged “Beijing Biden” as China’s preferred candidate, asserting he would be weak when negotiating deals with the country. Biden-aligned super PAC American Bridge, for instance, has been countering the attacks by arguing Trump’s tough talk is just for show given his Chinese business ties.
