US President Joe Biden on Saturday hit out at Donald Trump for his “dark vision” for the country and said he would resume campaigning next week to highlight his Republican rival’s Project 2025 agenda, even as Democrats called on him to drop out of the race.
In a thread of 13 posts on X, Biden, 81, said he had the “distinct misfortune” of watching Trump’s speech, which he fact-checked and ripped apart the latter’s claims one by one, at times, backing up what his government had done on that issue late Friday night local time.
Biden, who tested positive for COVID-19 a few days ago, is in isolation at his home in Delaware. After this week of rest, he is expected to resume campaigning next week as he aims to contest re-election.
“I’m stuck at home due to COVID, so I had the misfortune of watching Donald Trump’s speech at the RNC. What the hell was he talking about?” Biden began the post on X, mocking the opposition party’s presidential candidate’s keynote address for the November 5 election at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Thursday.
Biden then added 11 more posts, each one fact-checking issues that included what the 78-year-old Trump did with COVID-19, his claims about Social Security and Medicare, tax cuts, inflation and the Project 2025 agenda, according to which Trump “wants to put immigrants in mass detention camps.” “He praised Hannibal Lecter. Donald, Hannibal Lecter isn’t real. And he’s a cannibal,” the post said, which went almost viral and received the most retweets and likes among other posts in the thread.
The thread ended with: “And if you’re with me, join our campaign” and had a poster showing Trump and his running mate JD Vance with a caption: ‘Defend democracy. Defeat Trump-Vance.’ Meanwhile, in a statement released by his campaign, Biden said: “Donald Trump’s dark vision for the future is not who we are as Americans. As a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the ballot box.” He added, “I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue highlighting the danger Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda poses as well as making the case for my own record and my vision for America: where we save our democracy
“For over 90 minutes he focused on his own grievances, with no plan to unite us and no plan to improve the lives of working people,” the president said, referring to Trump’s speech.
“He avoided mentioning his Project 2025 agenda but still proudly displayed the worst of MAGA (Make America Great Again) extremism,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s mention of immigrants. “Americans know exactly where he wants to take this country.” One of the priorities of Project 2025, published by the Heritage Foundation, is to create a roadmap for the first 180 days of the new Trump administration to quickly remodel every federal agency around his conservative viewpoint. According to CNN, it also aims to recruit and train thousands of people loyal to the conservative movement to fill federal government positions.
The Biden-Harris campaign charged: “Trump is still the same twice-impeached, 34-times-convicted criminal desperate for revenge and intent on retribution in a second term.” Days after Biden’s disastrous performance against Trump in the first presidential debate, Democrats remain divided over whether he can beat the former president in November and by Friday at least 10 Democrats had joined the chorus calling on him to withdraw.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
