Politics
CNN Gives Biden A Platform To Discuss Coronavirus After The Former VP Called Out Trump’s ‘Slow’ Virus Response
No featured image available
CNN announced Thursday night that former Vice President Joe Biden will participate in a town hall forum Friday that will discuss how he would tackle the coronavirus pandemic were he president.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper will moderate the forum at 8 p.m. ET and is inviting people who have dealt with the virus in their own lives to ask the Democratic frontrunner questions. Biden is abiding by social distancing guidance and will speak from the basement of his Delaware home.
Biden and his surrogates are ratcheting up attacks on the president’s ongoing response to the virus. He said in a statement Thursday that Trump “bears full responsibility” for what the Democratic presidential candidate considers a slow response to coronavirus.
“The harsh reality is that at least 3 million people now don’t have jobs because our president didn’t do his job when it mattered,” Biden said in the statement after reports Thursday showed nearly 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment last week.
He suggested that Trump’s response was “slow and uncoordinated.”
Meanwhile, pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country PAC is reportedly running advertisements nationally on broadcast and cable programs accusing the president of failing to properly address the virus, which originated in China and has killed more than 17,000 people globally.
The ad also states that Trump cried “hoax” during the outbreak of the virus without directly saying he called coronavirus itself a hoax, a false claimed that has repeatedly been debunked.
Running advertisements thrashing the president during a health crisis looks bad, according to Daniel Kreiss, a professor of political communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“It’s a very fine line between ensuring that the president has the legitimacy to speak authoritatively on what Americans must do in order to be safe, and the very real and legitimate questions to raise regarding how the president has handled this crisis given that he’s on the ballot in November,” Kreiss told The Washington Post in a March 17 report.
Kreiss was discussing digital groups that are running advertisements thrashing Trump’s moves.
Neither CNN nor Biden’s campaign have responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].