Biden Camp Pushes Three False Anti-Trump Claims Within Six Days
The 2020 presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden has been very busy — not busy making the case for why the 77-year-old should win the nomination on his third attempt, but rather busy mudslinging.
Apparently sticking with the former VP’s lucky number, Joe Biden’s campaign put forth three false anti-Trump claims within six days.
The first lie came courtesy of Biden’s Twitter account on March 19, when the candidate claimed that President Donald Trump eliminated the office charged with dealing with pandemics.
“The Obama-Biden Administration set up the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense to prepare for future pandemics like COVID-19,” he wrote.
“Donald Trump eliminated it — and now we’re paying the price.”
The Obama-Biden Administration set up the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense to prepare for future pandemics like COVID-19.
Donald Trump eliminated it — and now we’re paying the price.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 19, 2020
Sorry Joe, he didn’t eliminate the office, but simply consolidated three bloated government entities in an effort to streamline and eliminate redundancies.
Tim Morrison, who was in charge of the transition as he served on the National Security Council at the White House, set the record straight in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.
“It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, ‘dissolved the office’ at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness,” Morrison wrote.
“Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious.”
“One [move to streamline] the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one,” he wrote. “It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented.”
Maybe Biden was confused because reducing waste is something swamp-dwelling bureaucrats of his ilk seldom do.
The second lie came on March 21, when Biden tweeted out a hit piece disguised as an informational video featuring former White House Ebola response coordinator Ron Klain.
In the video, Klain claims that “anyone who raised an alarm about this — a red flag — was silenced. Look no further than Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a career official at the Centers for Disease Control who was the first to raise the alarm.”
Everyone knows that we’re facing a real crisis from the coronavirus. But do you know how we got here and what we need to do next? Ron Klain, former White House Ebola Response Coordinator, breaks it down for us: pic.twitter.com/XRkIw2EzM4
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 21, 2020
The video implies that after Messonnier publicized the seriousness of the coronavirus threat on Feb. 25, she was immediately silenced by the administration.
The problem is, as The Washington Post reported, Messonnier continued to give telephone briefings well into March.
The third lie is Biden’s magnum opus: that Trump called the coronavirus a “hoax,” which is a falsehood perpetuated directly by former VP and featured in an ad released by the Unite the Country PAC on Wednesday.
This thirty second video contains three blatant lies in one neat little package of prevarications. If you’re better at math than than these people, you can calculate that it’s one lie every 10 seconds.
Besides perpetuating the myth about Trump silencing advisors and eliminating the office in charge of dealing with pandemics, this ad recycles Biden’s since-debunked claim that earned him four Pinocchios from The Washington Post.
A different ad, tweeted out by Biden on March 3, is edited in such a way to make it look like Trump called the coronavirus a hoax at a Feb. 28 rally.
We can’t sit by and lose this country to Donald Trump. Today, we take it back — together.
Go vote: https://t.co/Hy8C4n0lUk pic.twitter.com/0YgyJFr9YR
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 3, 2020
After viewing the footage, it is clear how brazen this lie is.
Trump says the word “coronavirus” and then speaks for a full minute before uttering the phrase “new hoax,” referring to the media’s first attempt to slander the him with the “Russia collusion” accusations followed by the media’s narrative that Trump was bungling the coronavirus response, which is the “new hoax.”
Trump was clearly speaking about the media’s coverage and not the disease itself, as both ads lead the audience to believe.
Furthermore, Trump reiterated again in a news conference on Feb. 29 that he was talking about the media hoax and acknowledged that coronavirus is “very serious.”
Biden has been using lies as his tactic of last resort. This kind of dishonesty is despicable — even for a veteran Democrat — and smacks of desperation.
Just because he’s winning primaries against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the other relic holding on by the skin of his teeth in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, it doesn’t mean he can beat such a formidable opponent as Trump.
Let’s see if voters agree in November.
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