Joe Biden campaign advisor Jake Sullivan on Sunday defended the Democratic nominee holding crowded campaign events in early March, saying President Trump had information about the virus that Biden did not.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Fox News’ Chris Wallace pressed Sullivan on why Biden held such events at the same time he warned Trump was ill-prepared to handle a pandemic.
“Because he wasn’t the president, and he didn’t get the information from government experts telling him this was deadly and airborne the way President Trump did,” Sullivan replied.
“He wasn’t being told by his national security adviser the way Donald Trump was that this was going to be the worst crisis of his presidency,” he continued. “He didn’t have access to the kind of information that Donald Trump had and Donald Trump got all that information, learned this virus was deadly, learned it was airborne, learned it was worse than the flu and then lied to the American people and did nothing about it.”
Wallace brought up a comment Biden made accusing Trump of “xenophobia” shortly after the president announced a ban on certain Chinese nationals entering the U.S. The former vice president was not directly referencing the travel ban in the remarks, according to Politifact.
“Joe Biden was talking about Donald Trump’s record from the beginning of demonizing Chinese-Americans, of giving names to this virus, of raising questions about whether we should trust Asian-Americans,” Sullivan said. “This is something Donald Trump has been doing over the course of his four years is using xenophobia and fearmongering in the moment of crisis rather than doing his job.”
Biden’s actual position on the travel restrictions, Sullivan said, was that “these travel bans can slow the virus but they can’t stop the virus, and that’s what the record reflects.”
“His whole point was the only way long-term for us to get this virus under control is for the president to stand up and do his job here at home where the virus is circulating,” he added.