DNC 2020: Bill Clinton tears into Trump for wasting time on 'TV and social media' instead of fighting Covid-19
A day after former first lady Michelle Obama slammed President Donald Trump, it was former president Bill Clinton's turn to tear into Trump at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, August 18. The 74-year-old, who like Trump, survived an impeachment during his stint in office (1993-2001), accused the incumbent of spending hours watching television and playing around on social media instead of fighting the coronavirus pandemic which has killed more than 171,000 Americans so far.
While Michelle called Trump the "wrong president" and said that he cannot "fake" his way through this high-profile job, Clinton said the incumbent is not even capable of doing the job.
"If you want a president who defines the job by spending hours a day watching TV and zapping people on social media, he's your man," the veteran said on the second night of the virtual DNC. Trump is often criticized for his endless engagement on Twitter at odd hours and mostly attacking opponents and endorsing viewpoints that go in his favor.
Clinton himself faced criticism
However, Clinton himself came under attack as a few pictures of him allegedly enjoying a massage from a victim of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein started circulating on social media hours before he made his speech. The woman allegedly giving the former president a massage is Chauntae Davies, one of Epstein’s accusers, who was 22 at the time. Davies was reportedly asked to give Clinton a massage after his flight to Africa with Epstein in 2002 on the pedophile’s private jet The Lolita Express, according to a Daily Mail report.
Clinton was slammed on Twitter before he made an appearance for his speech with Republican supporters mocking him saying the Democratic party was suspending its #MeToo movement to accommodate the former president. Democratic support for the same movement came under fire after Tara Reade, a former aide to Joe Biden, the party's presumptive presidential nominee, accused him of digitally raping her in an empty room at the Capitol way back in 1993 when he was a senator from Delaware.
Clinton slams Trump's response to Covid-19
Clinton though seemed little perturbed by the circulation of the controversial pictures. Taking on the incumbent president over his response to the pandemic that has affected more than 5.4 million people in the US, he said in his brief speech: "Denying, distracting, and demeaning works great if you're trying to entertain and inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses like a house of cards. Covid doesn't respond to any of that. To beat it, you've got to go to work and deal with the facts."
The Trump administration has been accused of lacking a solid plan to deal with the pandemic and ignoring opinions given by experts. The dual impact of the outbreak in the health and economic sectors has threatened Trump's chances of returning to office a second term. "When he didn’t like the expert advice he was given, he ignored it," Clinton said.
"Only when Covid exploded in even more states that he encouraged people to wear masks. And then many more were dying. When asked about the surging deaths. He shrugged and said, it is what it is, but didn't have to be this way," Clinton said and added, "Covid hit us much harder than it had to." Clinton, who has spoken in every Democratic convention since 1980, also called Trump's Oval Office a "storm center" and blasted the incumbent over his claims of creating the best American economy ever.
"Donald Trump says we're leading the world. Well, we are the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple. At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command center. Instead, it's a storm center. There's only chaos. Just one thing never changes — his determination to deny responsibility and shift the blame. The buck never stops there," the former president said in sharp words.
Clinton, who himself has been accused of sexual harassment by women and found himself getting involved in an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky during his presidency, then backed 77-year-old Biden and called him a "go-to-work president". He added, "Our party is united in offering you a very different choice: a go-to-work president. A down-to-earth, get-the-job-done guy. A man with a mission: to take responsibility, not shift the blame; concentrate, not distract; unite, not divide. Our choice is Joe Biden."