Trump accuses Biden of standing up for China while it 'cripples America' in new campaign ad
With the exit of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders from the presidential race, it is now certain that former vice president Joe Biden will be the man that President Donald Trump will lock horns with ahead of the November 3 election. A precursor for the intense contest in the days ahead came soon after Sanders announced his exit with the incumbent's campaign now targeting Biden using a China angle in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Thursday, April 9, an ad uploaded on YouTube titled “Biden Stands Up For China” showed a three-point attack against the former VP that included charges of nepotism and cronyism, his reaction to the pandemic that has hit over 500,000 Americans, and concerns about his mental health.
In the ad that runs for about a minute, it was alleged through accompanying texts that Biden protected China’s feelings when his own country was going through a crisis. "Biden stands up for China while China cripples America,” it said.
China has come under attack from the rest of the world after the virus reportedly originated from its Wuhan city towards the end of 2019.
The outbreak soon turned into a pandemic and the US now stands to be the most affected nation with the highest number of confirmed cases and second-highest death toll.
The Trump administration has been critical of China at this time and even slammed the top leadership of the World Health Organization accusing it of favoring Beijing in the times of the pandemic.
Republicans and Democrats annoyed with China
Recently, The Harris Poll said in a survey that members of both the Republican and Democratic camps were feeling annoyed with China over the pandemic and wanted the US leadership to come up with a more realistic and tough policy vis-a-vis Beijing.
According to a piece in the conservative Hotair website, Trump’s campaign team did not take much time to grab the implications of the poll and started attacking Biden on the China question.
“The Trump campaign dropped this ad last night offering Joe Biden’s thoughts and actions on China. It’s positively brutal, and well deserved,” wrote Ed Morrissey.
The ad also spoke about the business dealings of Hunter Biden, the tainted son of Joe, in connection with private equity firm Rosemont Seneca Partners that he co-founded in 2009 with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former secretary of state John Kerry.
In March 2018, the New York Post came up with an exclusive report that said Rosemont Seneca joining forces to do business in China with another consultancy with political links, named the Thornton Group. The Massachusetts-based firm is led by James Bulger, the nephew of mob hitman James “Whitey” Bulger.
Within a year of opening Rosemont Seneca’s doors, Hunter and Devon Archer, a longtime friend of Heinz and Kerry, were in China and got access at the top level. Thornton Group’s description of the meeting on their Chinese-language website was: “Chinese executives “extended their warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe Biden),” the NY Post report added.
In October last year, another NY Post report noted that Rosemont Seneca “became a partner in a new investment company backed by the state-owned Bank of China. Christening the new firm Bohai Harvest RST (BHR), the partners set out to raise $1 billion for the new fund.”
It was the suspicious links of the Bidens in countries like Ukraine and China during the Barack Obama presidency that Trump spoke out on last year. However, Trump’s bid to put pressure on the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens (Hunter worked in an energy firm in the East European nation) in an apparent move to derail Biden’s presidential campaign backfired as the president got impeached by the House. The Senate acquitted him later.
With Joe now set to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, it seems the political controversies will revive, particularly with the popular anger rising against China over the coronavirus outbreak. Morrissey said in his piece: “This is a bad year to have been a Beijing apologist. Team Trump will beat Biden like a drum over this all year long — and if they don’t, it will be the worst case of political malpractice since, er, Hillary Clinton forgot Wisconsin existed.”
On Monday, April 6, Trump and Biden had a brief conversation over the telephone about the federal government's response to the pandemic which has pushed the election to the back row. The two talked on the same day they trashed each other on Twitter.