At a North Carolina rally Saturday afternoon, Trump pointed to the shifts in Biden’s position on fracking as a key liability in the election. But he also continued to downplay the virus, falsely claiming that the increase in coronavirus cases is due to increased testing and touting that the nation’s mortality rate has fallen because of enhanced treatments and improved management of Covid-19 patients.
“We’re more than eight months into this crisis, and the President still doesn’t have a plan. He’s given up. He’s quit on you. He’s quit on your family. He’s quit on America,” Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday. “He just wants us to grow numb and resign to the horrors of this death toll and the pain it’s causing so many Americans.”
Trump’s attacks on Biden’s stance on energy and the climate crisis come at a time when the two men are battling over Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, which Trump won in 2016. The commonwealth, where Biden is spending the day on Saturday, could serve as the lynchpin to who wins the election in 2020.
Biden responded to Trump during his Saturday’s event in Bucks County, Pennsylvania: “Let me be clear also: I’m not banning fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. I can protect Pennsylvania jobs, period. No matter how many times Donald Trump lies.”
During his two rallies in Florida on Friday, Trump highlighted Biden’s assertion during Thursday night’s debate that he “would transition from the oil industry, yes” to help address the climate crisis by increasing reliance on renewable energy.
Pressed by reporters after the debate, Biden clarified that he was referring to ending federal subsidies for oil. “Eventually we’re going to have to go to oil, but we’re not getting rid of fossil fuels,” Biden said. “We’re getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels, but we’re not getting rid of fossil fuels for a long time,” he said, adding “it will not be gone” until “probably 2050.”
But Trump eliminated any nuance in Biden’s position when in Florida on Friday, telling a crowd of seniors at the sprawling retirement community known as The Villages that Biden “wants to abolish the oil industry.”
The President claimed that was the big “whoa” of the debate in Nashville and once again cited states he said would be affected: “Texas are you watching? Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Ohio are you watching?” Trump said.
“I think he should have lost five or six states with that one,” Trump said of Biden’s comments during an evening rally in Pensacola, where he told the crowd they should be concerned about a potential rise in their gas prices under a Biden presidency.
Stretching Biden’s comments to the realm of the ridiculous, Trump also claimed in The Villages that Biden’s transition to greater reliance on renewable energy would mean that America’s seniors “have no air conditioning during the summer, no heat during the winter and no electricity during peak hours.” He also falsely claimed that Biden’s plans would include getting “rid of airplanes.”
The President’s scare tactics on energy were part of his broader argument Friday that the election is a choice between a “Trump super recovery” and a Biden “depression.”
The Trump campaign quickly tied Biden’s debate comments about oil to the shifts in his position on fracking in a new ad that they are airing in Pennsylvania, which falsely claims the former vice president “will end fracking” and is willing to sacrifice blue collar jobs to do so.
Biden touts pandemic plans as cases surge
Though Trump told his audience in The Villages to “be careful, socially distance and all of the things,” including “wear a mask if you can’t socially distance,” many members of the crowd at his large outdoor rally were not wearing masks Friday. And on a day when Biden outlined more detailed plans for fighting the pandemic, Trump largely ignored the recent warnings from the nation’s top health experts that the nation is headed into a darkening phase of the pandemic.
US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams warned that this week will probably mark “our highest number of cases that we’ve ever had on a daily basis in the United States.” Speaking at Meridian Global Leadership Summit, he said hospitalizations, which generally lag behind cases, are starting to go up in 75% of the jurisdictions across the country. That trend has often been followed by a rise in deaths.
“Last night we saw the President of the United States lie to the American people and repeatedly lie about the state of this pandemic,” Biden said in Wilmington Friday about the previous night’s debate. On Saturday in Pennsylvania, Biden again delivered a sharp critique of the President’s handling of the pandemic.
“More than 220,000 dead Americans because of Covid-19,” Biden said in Bucks County, going on to point out the incongruence between the US posting its highest single-day number of new cases and Trump saying the country is “rounding the corner.”
Trump, who is holding three rallies on Saturday, continues to campaign at events with no social distancing and few masks.
In Lumberton, he boasted about his own immunity after contracting coronavirus, questioning the assertion by doctors that he may only be immune for four months, and claiming that he could go through the North Carolina crowd and kiss everyone if he wanted to.
He mocked the social distancing at Biden’s events, claiming that the cars at the former vice president’s drive-in event earlier in Bucks County, were too close together, and suggested that the media’s dark tone about the rising number of coronavirus cases is intended to hurt him politically. At one point, he said Americans won’t be hearing about the virus after Election Day.
Fauci stressed that getting control of the virus doesn’t mean forcing another economic shutdown, but instead doing basic things that can slow the spread of the virus, including wearing a mask, washing hands frequently, social distancing and avoiding crowds.
“They sound very simple, but we’re not uniformly doing that and that’s one of the reasons why we’re seeing these surges,” Fauci said on “Erin Burnett Out Front.”
“That’s the reason why, as much as I can, essentially plead with the American public to please take these things seriously,” Fauci added. “We can turn it around.”
This story has been updated with additional developments Saturday.