President Trump condemned Joe Biden’s convention speech for its gloomy, unsparing assessment of the challenges facing the country, rejecting his Democratic opponent’s vision of “American darkness” for what he said was “American greatness.”
After ceding the national spotlight to Democrats for the past four days, Trump delivered his response during a speech to the conservative Council for National Policy in Arlington, Virginia.
He accused Democrats of failing to address the law and order problems facing America, omitting any mention of the threat from China and of holding the “darkest and angriest and gloomiest” convention in history.
“They spent four straight days attacking America as racist and a horrible country that must be redeemed,” he said. “Joe Biden grimly declared a season of American darkness, and yet look at what we’ve accomplished until the plague came in.”
The president himself has delivered dark visions of the dangers facing the country. Most notably, his inauguration speech conjured the image of “American carnage” to describe a landscape of shuttered factories and abandoned mines.
But in a possible taste of his forthcoming convention speech, he tried to offer a more positive message, outlining his administration’s achievements as he criticized the Democrats’ dark view.
“They want to punish America and its citizens instead of holding them high,” he said. “When Joe Biden sees American darkness, I see American greatness.”
“We’ve seen heroic doctors and nurses racing into action to save lives,” he said.
He trumpeted the development of lifesaving therapies and rapid progress on vaccine research as he presented an image of national ingenuity and resolve in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
And he said that the most important parts of Biden’s Thursday night speech were its omissions.
“He didn’t talk about law enforcement,” he said. “He didn’t talk about bringing safety to Democrat-run cities that are totally out of control. China was never mentioned in any way shape or form, adding that Beijing would own the U.S. if Biden were elected.”
He and his aides have tried to blame the Left for violent protests in the wake of deaths in police custody and warned that a Biden administration would be soft on China.
