Biden camp blasts GOP convention as ‘alternate reality,’ citing COVID-19 deaths

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s (D) campaign blasted the Republican National Convention over what it said was a lack of a plan to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a lengthy statement early Wednesday, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, Kate Bedingfield, argued that White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow’s reference to the outbreak using the past tense indicated that the Trump administration is not taking the coronavirus seriously.

“Not only did the American people hear no plan for overcoming the pandemic for the second consecutive night of the [convention] — after more than seven months of utter mismanagement — but the president’s chief economic adviser even referred to the coronavirus in the past tense,” said Bedingfield.

“President Trump’s [Republican National Convention] is an alternate reality. In this delusion, thousands of Americans didn’t die in the last week from COVID-19, nor have millions of Americans been infected or put out of work. Our economy hasn’t ground to a halt and our kids aren’t being kept home from school,” she added.

The Trump campaign fired back in a statement from communications director Tim Murtaugh, arguing that Biden’s initial unwillingness to support the president’s ban on travel from China earlier this year indicated that a Biden administration would have failed to control the virus’s spread.

“Americans have seen President Trump out front and leading the nation in the fight against the coronavirus. The President’s task force began meeting in January and he restricted travel from China, and then Europe, early on. At the time, Joe Biden criticized the decision, calling it ‘hysterical xenophobia’ and ‘fear-mongering,’ so we know Biden would not have done it. We would be in far worse position today if Joe Biden had been president in January,” he said.

The first and second nights of the GOP convention featured numerous allies of President Trump, including his adult children and first lady Melania Trump. While the coronavirus was discussed, the convention has featured little in terms of future plans for economic recovery in the wake of the outbreak.

A second-term agenda released by the campaign earlier this week called for a “return to normal” to be a top priority for the nation as well as the promise of “10 million new jobs in 10 months.”

More than 5.7 million COVID-19 cases have now been confirmed in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than any other country in the world. More than 176,600 Americans have died from the disease since the outbreak began.

–Updated at 9:30 a.m.