US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made an upbeat show of unity on Thursday as they held their first joint public event since Harris replaced the president as the Democratic Party’s candidate in November’s US presidential election.
Chants of “Thank you, Joe” rang out from the audience at a community college in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington.
Biden announced a major deal to reduce medication prices for retirees on social welfare programs.
Photo: AFP
However, the biggest star was Biden’s vice president, who has surprised many by uniting the Democratic Party and surging in the polls against former US president Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, since her abrupt entry into the White House race.
“She can make one hell of a president,” Biden said of Harris.
Shortly after the joint appearance, Trump delivered rambling and often angry remarks from his New Jersey golf club, before taking questions from a handful of journalists.
Harris has a “very strong communist lean” and would mean the “death of the American dream,” he said.
The real-estate billionaire and scandal-engulfed former president has struggled to pivot his campaign since Biden dropped out on July 21 amid Democratic concerns that he lacked the stamina at 81 to do the job.
Until then, Trump was rising steadily in the polls, in large part on his message that Biden was losing his mental acuity — a charge that gained currency when the president badly flubbed a televised presidential debate against his predecessor.
At his golf club event, the 78-year-old Trump began by reading lengthy statements from a binder notebook.
Ostensibly scheduled to attack Harris on inflation, with household products piled high on a table next to him, he almost immediately veered off into a series of complaints about the media and insults at Harris, who he said is “not smart.”
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
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