Biden Blasts Trump's Coronavirus Response from the Sidelines: 'He Should Stop Talking'
President Donald Trump’s morale-boosting message to Americans that the current restrictions under which they are living will not last forever was a mistake, according to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
The former vice president on Tuesday criticized a comment Trump made that he would like to have the nation restored to largely normal activity by Easter, which is April 12.
“I’d love to have it open by Easter,” Trump said at a coronavirus town hall. “I would love to have that. It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll make it an important day for this too.”
“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” he added, according to a White House media pool report.
Biden scoffed at setting Easter as a goal during an interview blitz.
“I’d like to get the economy going up tomorrow, but the idea that he’s gonna move in that direction, thinks that could be done by Easter?” Biden said in an MSNBC interview.
“That would be a real resurrection if that could happen.”
Biden also rejected an Easter deadline for a return to normal life in an interview with CNN.
“He should stop talking and start to listen to the medical experts,” Biden said. “You talk about having an economic crisis. You want to have an economic crisis, watch this spike, watch the number of dead go up, watch the number of people who in fact connect with this virus.
“When are you gonna be able to open up the economy? Look, we all want the economy to open as rapidly as possible. The way to do that is, let’s take care of the medical side of this immediately.”
The former vice president expressed similar sentiments in his MSNBC interview.
“I would like to open up the government tomorrow if it were possible,” Biden said, according to The Hill. “Let’s be realistic. This curve is going up and up and up because we did not act when we should have acted.”
“Look, if you want to ruin the economy for a long time, let’s go ahead see this thing continue by having it burst out again,” he added.
“We haven’t even flattened the curve. It’s frustrating to hear this president speak. He should stop talking. Let the experts speak.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, later said that Trump’s goal of opening the country back up by Easter is flexible.
“No one is going to want to tone down things when you see what’s going on in a place like New York City,” Fauci said at a coronavirus news conference.
“But the country is a big country,” he said, noting that in other places, the virus does not appear to have penetrated society as deeply.
Fauci earlier said in an interview with Science that the imposition of restrictions is a balancing act.
“There is a discussion and a delicate balance about what’s the overall impact of shutting everything down completely for an indefinite period of time,” he said. “So, there’s a compromise.
“If you knock down the economy completely and disrupt infrastructure, you may be causing health issues, unintended consequences, for people who need to be able to get to places and can’t.”
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