US Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden’s campaign on Wednesday said it would be in touch with the White House to set up a call for the former US vice president to offer his ideas on combating COVID-19 to US President Donald Trump after a top White House official said that the administration had not heard any suggestions from Biden.
A day of back and forth between the president and his likely general election opponent culminated in Trump saying during a press briefing that he would “absolutely” take Biden’s call.
“Oh absolutely, I’d love to speak with him,” Trump said. “I think he’s probably a nice guy.”
Photo: AFP
Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield responded that “our teams will be in touch and we will arrange a call.”
Earlier in the day, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News that she had not heard anything from Biden about his plans to fight coronavirus.
“Why doesn’t [former] vice president Biden call the White House today and offer some support? He’s in his bunker in Wilmington,” she said, referring to the makeshift television studio Biden’s campaign rushed to build in his Delaware home.
In response, the Biden campaign said the candidate was prepared to make the call.
“Vice president Biden has been extending his advice for months, and he did so again on the air last night,” Bedingfield said in a statement responding to Conway.
Appearing on MSNBC on Tuesday night, Biden spoke about what he described as Trump’s “responsibility” to do more, including to ramp up the use of the Defense Production Act.
He also said it would be “wise” for Trump to speak with former US president Barack Obama, whose administration oversaw the response to the 2014 ebola outbreak.
However, Biden said he did not think Trump wanted advice.
“I don’t get a sense that the president wants to hear from anybody. It’s all about, like, asking governors to thank him for what he’s doing as president? Come on. What is this all about?” Biden said.
Conway said the criticism was “disappointing” to hear.
“I think the critics and the naysayers seem so much more small and so much more small and unhelpful and petty than they ever have,” she said.
Biden has given a series of speeches and TV interviews in which he called Trump’s virus response insufficient and urged him to take more drastic steps, such as ordering companies to manufacture much-needed medical equipment.
The former vice president has also released a response plan that calls for free testing and expanded emergency family leave, among other steps.
“Donald Trump is not accountable for coronavirus itself — but he is accountable for the federal government’s slow and chaotic response to this outbreak,” Bedingfield said. “Unfortunately, Trump spent months after the virus was discovered disregarding repeated warnings from his scientific and intelligence experts, and downplaying the threat of this outbreak to the American people. He could have heeded [former] vice president Biden’s public advice not to take China’s word as they misled the world about their efforts to stop the spread.”
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the