Joe Biden Goes There at CNN Town Hall, Says Trump ‘Should Step Down’
Former Vice President Joe Biden slammed President Donald Trump for not being “honest” with the American people about the coronavirus pandemic, and said “This president should step down.”
At Thursday night’s drive-up CNN town hall event, an attendee named William “Trip” O’Malley told Biden “Mr. Vice President, the messaging on the coronavirus from the White House has been all over the place since February. It’s been extremely inconsistent. It’s caused so many people in this country to ignore the virus, and not take the necessary precautions.”
“How will you get the proper messaging out to all Americans to keep them informed as to how to properly protect themselves and others from this pandemic?” he asked.
Biden delivered a lengthy response in which he lambasted Trump over his response, and over the revelations that Trump knew how dangerous the virus was but lied about it publicly. He wound up his answer with an apparent ad-lib in which he suggested Trump “step down”:
What presidents say matter. People listen. I will make it clear what is needed to be done. I cannot mandate people wearing masks, but we’ve just been told, if — we should expect another 215,000 dead by January. But if we wore a mask, we’d save 100,000 of those lives, doing nothing but that.
We have to make sure we lay out to the American people the truth, tell them the truth. And those — and I would make sure that I would call every governor in the country into the White House and say, you should be putting mandates out. If they’re — and if they don’t, I’d call the mayors in their towns and their cities and say, put out mandates. You can save lives.
And we should be providing for the PPE, the protective gear that is needed.
Look, you know what recently happened? The president of the United States said that no longer would we, in fact, provide masks for schools, for schools, pay them to have the masks in schools because it was not a national emergency.
What is he talking about? It’s totally irrational. And, look, this is all about one thing, the stock market. He doesn’t want to see anything happen. It’s all about his re-election.
It should be about the American people, and they’re in trouble. And if we don’t do it — and, by the way, his own CDC’s director contradicted him recently. He said if, in fact, you just wore this mask, nothing else but this mask, you would save between now and January, another 100,000 lives.
And so, we have to be honest with the American people, they’re tough. They know.
As Franklin Roosevelt said, things get worse and worse until they get better and better, but you’ve got to level with the American people, shoot from the shoulder. There’s never been a time they have not been able to step up.
This president should step down.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
