President Trump slammed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for staying noticeably absent from the campaign trail amid the pandemic—just weeks away from the election.
Trump and Biden, the former vice president under the Obama administration, met on a stage in Nashville for the second and final presidential debate of the 2020 campaign. Biden said Trump downplayed the outbreak of the coronavirus and has stated that the pandemic will be “over soon.”
“[I didn’t] say ‘over soon.’ I said we’re learning to live with it,” Trump said, asserting that Biden had mischaracterized his comments. Trump went on to say Biden’s way of thinking about the pandemic is divorced from reality and that most people cannot afford to pause life until a vaccine is out.
“We have no choice. We can’t lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does. He has the ability to lock himself up,” Trump said. “I don’t know, he’s obviously made a lot of money some place, but he has this thing about living in a basement. People can’t do that. By the way, I, as the president, couldn’t do that. I’d love to put myself in the basement or a beautiful room in the White House and go away for a year and a half until it disappears. I can’t do that.”
TRUMP: "We can't lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does. He has the ability to lock himself up. I don’t know, he’s obviously made a lot of money someplace but he has this thing about living in a basement." pic.twitter.com/Zr8nKXeXrB
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 23, 2020
Biden has remained noticeably cloistered in his Delaware home for many days throughout the campaign. In the run-up to Thursday night’s debate, Biden largely remained in his home ostensibly to debate prep for five days.
Trump’s jab at Biden’s money may be a veiled reference to numerous overseas business dealings made by Biden’s son Hunter that have received renewed scrutiny in recent days after the New York Post published emails last week reportedly from Hunter’s laptop. The emails indicate that the former vice president may have known more about Hunter’s dealings than Joe Biden has claimed.
A former business associate of Hunter, Tony Bobulinski, has also said that the Democratic nominee was set up to benefit financially from at least one deal Hunter attempted to strike with an executive of a now-bankrupt Chinese energy company.
Bobulinski gave a statement to the Post, which was published early on Thursday morning, testifying to the veracity of one email from Hunter’s alleged laptop outlining a plan to split equity in a new business venture with a former executive at CEFC China Energy Co. The email said “H,” a reference to Hunter, would get a 20% stake and hold 10% for “the big guy,” who Bobulinski identified as Joe Biden.
Bobulinski’s statement said in part:
Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.
I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.
Story cited here.
