Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) took aim at President Trump on Sunday as the president drew criticism for spending part of his Memorial Day weekend tweeting and golfing while the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus approaches 100,000.
Biden in a tweet said the presidency required more than “tweeting from your golf cart,” a reference to Trump’s decision to spend Memorial Day weekend at his private golf club in Virginia.
“The presidency is about a lot more than tweeting from your golf cart. It requires taking on the ultimate responsibility for the biggest decisions in the world. Donald Trump simply wasn’t prepared for that. I promise you I will be,” he wrote.
Biden’s shot at Trump comes as the president took aim at a slew of targets on Twitter on Sunday, including pushing baseless conspiracy theories against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and attacking his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions.
“Jeff, you had your chance & you blew it. Recused yourself ON DAY ONE (you never told me of a problem), and ran for the hills. You had no courage, & ruined many lives,” he wrote in one tweet.
The president also accused Democrats and governors around the country of opening the U.S. election system up to voter fraud on Sunday through efforts to expand mail-in voting, a step many advocates have said is necessary to prevent voter disenfranchisement due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has prohibited large public gatherings.
Trump also retweeted a string of posts from a conservative former congressional candidate named John K. Stahl that attacked political rivals including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
The Trump campaign in an emailed statement slammed Biden and contended that the president was far more prepared than the former vice president to handle the coronavirus pandemic, which has sickened more than 1.6 million Americans.
“Joe Biden, who probably didn’t write that tweet, isn’t even prepared to handle a simple webcast from his basement let alone manage a national crisis,” said Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesperson.
“In contrast, the American people can see that President Trump has been leading the nation through the coronavirus crisis and they know it is now time to safely reopen the economy. His visible outing shows that it’s time for Americans to get back to more normal activity and get moving again as soon as it is possible,” he added.
Trump himself also responded to the tweet later Sunday evening, referring to it as an “ad” and unleashing a wave of criticism aimed at Biden and former President Obama.
“Sleepy Joe’s representatives have just put out an ad saying that I went to play golf (exercise) today. They think I should stay in the White House at all times. What they didn’t say is that it’s the first time I’ve played golf in almost 3 months,” Trump said.
The president criticized Obama during the latter’s administration for playing golf during the Ebola outbreak, which killed two in the U.S., but had become known for spending weekends golfing at various Trump properties prior to the outbreak of coronavirus in the U.S.
Murtaugh also pointed to comments from Anthony Fauci, a member of the White Houes coronavirus task force, who recommended on Thursday that Americans spend Memorial Day weekend outdoors.
“Additionally, Dr. Fauci expressly said that Americans should get outdoors this weekend and specifically mentioned golf as a good activity. Biden should take that advice and get out of his basement,” Murtaugh said.
Biden’s criticism comes as the latest data from Johns Hopkins University shows the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus at 97,698. Trump did not address the death toll on Sunday but did claim in a tweet that coronavirus infections and deaths were decreasing.