Trump Says Biden Will “Listen To The Scientists,” And That's...Bad?
Trump’s comments underscore how vastly the president and former VP Biden differ on their approaches to the virus.
In an apparent attempt to discredit Joe Biden, President Trump warned rallygoers in Nevada that, if elected, his Democratic opponent would “listen to the scientists” on how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.
"He'll listen to the scientists. If I listened to the scientists, we'd have a country in a massive depression instead of — we're like a rocket ship," Trump said at a Carson City, NV rally Sunday.
In a response to Trump’s comments, Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to Axios, “Donald Trump tanked the strong economy he inherited from the Obama-Biden Administration by continually discounting and attacking warnings from the scientific and medical experts working around the clock to save lives.”
“Now new coronavirus cases are surging and layoffs are rising,” Bates continued.
Trump’s comments underscore how vastly the president and former VP Biden differ on their approaches to the virus, which has infected more than 8 million Americans including more than 200,000 deaths.
Biden has called for a nationwide mask mandate, and said that, if elected, he would advise governors to listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House coronavirus task force member and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Meanwhile, Trump, who himself was hospitalized with COVID-19, has repeatedly expressed views regarding the virus that often contradict health experts, including Dr. Fauci. He also refused to wear a mask for months, mocked Biden for wearing one, and recently asserted with an apparent air of machismo, that people shouldn’t let the virus “dominate” their lives.
When asked in a recent “60 Minutes” interview if he was surprised that Trump got the virus, Dr. Fauci said “absolutely not.” Fauci also discussed an event at the White House Rose Garden last month held in honor of President Trump’s Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett. The event has been linked to an outbreak of COVID-19 infections, including the president.
“I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask,” Fauci said. “When I saw that on TV, I said, ‘Oh my goodness. Nothing good can come outta that, that's gotta be a problem.’ And then sure enough, it turned out to be a superspreader event.”