Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden drives home his criticism of Donald Trump’s mismanagement of the Coronavirus pandemic, highlighting Trump’s inaction and disinformation as a threat to lives and “freedom”.

At a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania, Biden highlighted Trump’s statements to journalist Bob Woodward in February and March that he “downplayed” the “deadly stuff”:

But he knew it. He knew it, and did nothing. It is close to criminal….The idea that you are not going to not tell people what you have been told that this virus is incredibly contagious — seven times more contagious than the flu — you breathe the air and you get it sucked into your lungs — what has he done?

He challenged Trump’s undermining of Government scientists, including Trump’s refusal to endorse the wearing of masks in public to contain the virus.

See also TrumpWatch, Day 1,336: Coronavirus — Government Experts Knock Back Trump’s Disinformation

Dealing with Trump’s claims that a Coronavirus vaccine will be ready by the November election, Biden sided with the Government experts — including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield — who have said that a safe, effective vaccine is unlikely to be widely available before mid to late 2021.

I don’t trust the President on vaccines. I trust Dr. Fauci,” Biden said. “If Fauci says a vaccine is safe, I would take the vaccine. We should listen to the scientists, not the President.

He summarized, “It’s been the failure of this President to deal with this virus, and he knew about it. He knew the detail of it. He knew it in clear terms.”

The US death toll reached 197,633 on Thursday. Confirmed cases are 6,674,548.

It was revealed yesterday that Trump’s staff not only tried to block CDC reports, but also wrote a misleading guidance — in the name of the CDC — that said asymptomatic people did not need to be tested for Coronavirus.

“Costing Us Our Freedom”

Biden also took apart this week’s provocative statements of Trump’s enabler Attorney General William Barr, who said that Coronavirus measures were the “greatest intrusion on civil liberties” in history “other than slavery”.

What Bill Barr recently said is outrageous.

I will tell you what takes away your freedom: not being able to see your kid, not being able to go to the football game or baseball game, not seeing your mom or dad sick in the hospital, not being able to do the things, that’s what is costing us our freedom.

He countered Trump and Barr on “law and order”, including the Attorney General’s threat to charge anti-racism marchers with “sedition”. Noting that crime dropped 15% during the Obama Administration, in which he was Vice President, Biden asked, “Did you ever think you would see the day when six 4-star generals walked away from this President?”, over Trump’s response to Black Live Matters protests.

Several of them said they were ashamed at how he conducted himself. A President who stands out there when people are peacefully protesting in front of the White House, no violence whatsoever, and gets the military to put in tear gas…so he can walk to a Protestant church across from the White House and hold a Bible upside down.

See TrumpWatch, Day 1,239: Black Lives Matter — Gen. Milley Apologizes Over Trump Tear Gas Photo Op

Condemning “violence of any kind” around the anti-racism marches, Biden said about responsible policing:

The vast majority of police are decent, honorable people. One of the things I’ve found is, the only people who don’t like bad cops more than we don’t like them are police officers. And so what we have to do is we have to have a much more transparent means by which we provide for accountability within police departments.

Biden contrasted his approach with that of Trump: “I’ve condemned every form of violence, no matter what the source is. The President has yet to condemn the far right and the white supremacists and those guys walking around with AK-47s, and not doing a damn thing about them.”

Biden asked, “Do you feel safer in Donald Trump’s America when he incites these kinds of things?”

“Scranton v. Wall Street”

Biden also rebuffed Trump’s self-proclaimed populism with the portrayal of a President, handed his fortune by his father, who had little regard for others.

So many people lost their jobs. We are good as anybody else, and guys like Trump, who inherited everything and squandered what they inherited, are the people who I’ve always had a problem with.

Referring to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he grew up, Biden said:

I view this campaign as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue. All Trump can see from Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about is the stock market….

In my neighborhood in Scranton, not a lot of people (owned stock). We have to make sure that health care workers are paid, and paid a decent wage. At $15 an hour? It’s not enough for a health care worker.