Biden Calls Trump First ‘Racist’ President: Campaign Update
Trump Remains Socially Distant From Fauci: Campaign Update
(Bloomberg) -- Democratic nominee Joe Biden called President Donald Trump the first “racist” president. Former President Barack Obama will headline his first solo fundraiser for Biden on July 28. And some Republican mega-donors are looking closely at keeping a majority in the Senate.
There are 104 days until the election.
Other Developments:
Biden Calls Trump First ‘Racist’ President
Biden called Trump the first “racist” president on Wednesday, a comment that overlooked the dozen presidents who owned slaves or the many others who espoused racist beliefs and policies.
During a virtual town hall organized by the Service Employees International Union, the Democratic nominee criticized Trump for calling the coronavirus the “China virus,” saying “the way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening.”
“No sitting president has ever done this,” Biden said. “Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has.”
Biden has often criticized Trump for sowing racial division, but his comment that he is the first “racist” president elicited disagreement as people on social media pointed out that 12 presidents owned slaves and others, like Woodrow Wilson, were openly racist.
Trump and his campaign assailed Biden’s characterization, as the president hailed his administration’s efforts on criminal justice reform and job growth. “I have done more for Black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln,” Trump said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “Nobody has even been close.” -- Tyler Pager
Obama to Host Fundraiser for Biden (3:03 p.m.)
Obama will host a virtual fundraiser on Biden’s behalf on July 28, the first time the former president will anchor a solo event for his former No. 2.
Tickets for the fundraiser, which will also feature the actor George Clooney, range from $500 to $250,000.
Obama appeared alongside Biden for joint fundraisers on June 23 that raised $11 million for the Democratic nominee. Those were Obama’s first public appearances on behalf of Biden since he released an endorsement video in April.
On Thursday, the Biden campaign will release a video of a conversation between the two men about the coronavirus pandemic and other challenges facing the country, their first known in-person get together since Biden secured the nomination.
Adelson Among GOP Mega-Donors Eyeing Senate Races (1:54 p.m.)
Some Republican mega-donors such as Sheldon Adelson have put more of their money in the Senate races than the presidential contest so far this year.
The casino mogul and his wife, Miriam, combined to give $25 million, their first eight-figure donations of 2020, to the Senate Leadership Fund, which supports GOP Senate candidates.
The Adelsons, who each made the maximum contribution to Trump Victory in February, typically give bigger donations later in the year. In 2016, they combined to give $20 million to Future45, a super PAC that backed Trump, after Labor Day, with half that amount coming 11 days before the election.
Richard Uihlein, currently the biggest GOP donor with more than $34 million in contributions, gave $4.4 million to Restoration PAC in June, a super PAC that’s split the bulk of its $4.1 million in spending attacking Biden and Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. Uihlein’s wife, Elizabeth, gave $575,000 to Trump Victory and the couple has given $2.3 million to the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action this election cycle, but Uihlein has given far more, about $16.5 million, to Club for Growth Action, which focuses on House and Senate races.
In June, America First raised just $3.9 million, with more than half of that amount coming from Los Angeles-based developer Geoffrey Palmer, who gave $2 million. -- Bill Allison
Trump Believes Goya Makes Good Politics (1:05 p.m.)
The Trump campaign seems to think that if it’s Goya Foods, it’s good politics, releasing new Spanish-language ads on the controversy involving the brand.
After the New Jersey-based company’s CEO, Robert Unanue, said the U.S. was “truly blessed” to have Trump as president, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former HUD Secretary Julián Castro and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, among others, called for a boycott, leading Trump supporters to counter by calling for people to buy more Goya.
Trump and his daughter then posted photos of themselves with Goya products on social media, leading to complaints that Ivanka Trump was violating federal ethics rules against promoting products.
In a TV ad airing in Florida, popular Cuban actress Susana Pérez says, in Spanish with subtitles in English, “The left has launched a smear campaign against Goya, the brand we love, simply because Goya is working with President Trump just like it did with Obama.”
A similar radio ad features a woman telling her friend that “the Democrats didn’t like that the company’s CEO met with Trump and now they want to shut down Goya.”
Biden Campaign Targets GOP Senator Over Probe (10:56)
The Biden campaign is attacking Republican Senator Ron Johnson for pursuing an investigation into the Democratic nominee’s work with Ukraine just as the U.S. intelligence community is again warning of Russian and other foreign meddling in the presidential election.
Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is “party to a foreign influence operation against the United States,” Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield wrote in a memo dated Tuesday.
Pro-Russian Ukrainians have indicated that they’ve provided materials to the committee, which the Biden campaign is seeking to preempt with its warning about Johnson. Bedingfield argued that Johnson “will strain to provoke Democrats into responding to specific truncated and out of context snippets from documents and bad faith questioning of witnesses.”
Johnson spokesman Austin Altenburg pushed back, saying, “The Democrat and Ukrainian claims are false, and the Democrats know this.”
Some Republicans claim that as vice president, Biden improperly pushed for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a company where his son, Hunter Biden, served on the board. But there was an international campaign against the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, at the time that had bipartisan support in the U.S., including from Johnson, as the memo notes.
Trump was impeached earlier this year in part on charges that he withheld military aid to pressure Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation into Biden on the same issue. Trump was acquitted. -- Jennifer Epstein
Biden, Obama Pal Around in New Video (7:30 a.m.)
Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama met to discuss the coronavirus pandemic and other challenges facing the country, their first known in-person get together since Biden secured the Democratic presidential nomination.
The conversation, which was teased in a video snippet Wednesday morning, will be released in a longer video Thursday on both men’s social media platforms.
The clip released Wednesday shows Biden, the former vice president, and Obama, the 44th president, entering an office building and sitting down for a socially distant conversation in which they criticize Trump’s handling of the pandemic.
“Can you imagine standing up when you were president and saying ‘It’s not my responsibility. I take no responsibility.’ Literally. Literally,” Biden says in the video.
Obama replies, “Those words didn’t come out of our mouths when we were in office.”
Obama remains one of the Democratic Party’s most popular officials, but he has played a limited public role in Biden’s campaign so far. His only public appearance until this video was hosting a grassroots fundraiser that garnered more than $11 million. -- Tyler Pager
Trump Ad on Policing Shows Photo of Ukraine (7:06 a.m.)
A Facebook ad from the Trump campaign on recent police protests appears to use a photo from Ukraine in 2014.
Aimed at “Evangelicals for Trump,” the ad -- seen here in Facebook’s ad database -- shows an image of Trump with police officers side-by-side with an image of protesters near a fallen police officer, contrasting “public safety” with “chaos & violence.”
But, as first pointed out by former Hillary Clinton spokesman Jessie Lehrich on Twitter, the ad appears to be from a Feb. 18, 2014 protest in Kyiv.
A reverse image search online showed the photo on multiple foreign news stories about the protests in Ukraine, credited to Ukrainian photographer Mstyslav Chernov, who now works for the Associated Press. The officer also appears to be wearing a patch with the insignia of the Internal Troops of Ukraine, a now-disbanded police force.
Trump Remains Socially Distant From Fauci (6:26 a.m.)
Trump’s return to the White House briefings on the coronavirus came with a more restrained tone -- but without his own top expert.
Less than a week after replacing his campaign manager with a longtime Republican operative, Trump showed a more sober tone on the virus at Tuesday’s briefing, acknowledging it will get worse before it gets better and urging the public to wear masks.
But not at the briefing was Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a frequent target of Trump’s ire.
Instead, in a CNN interview hours earlier, Fauci responded to Trump calling him a “little bit of an alarmist,” by saying that he considered himself “more a realist than an alarmist.”
Biden has turned Trump’s treatment of Fauci into an issue in November, with his campaign calling an apparent White House effort to discredit Fauci “disgusting” and Biden pledging to keep him on the job if elected.
Trump Ad Tries to Tar Biden With ‘Defund Police’ (6:26 a.m.)
The Trump campaign is continuing to press the false claim that Biden wants to defund the police in a new ad.
The same week after Trump was fact-checked in a Fox News interview on the claim, his campaign released a 30-second ad that features an elderly woman reaching an answering machine when she calls 911 during a home invasion.
In the ad, Fox News anchor Sean Hannity can be heard saying on the woman’s TV: “Joe Biden has said he’s absolutely on board with defunding the police.”
Biden has said he’d consider tying a local department’s federal funding to efforts to maintain standards of police conduct, but he opposes efforts to defund law enforcement agencies.
Biden Highlights His Warning to Russia (6:26 a.m.)
In a sign that he’s seeking to turn possible Russian election interference into a campaign issue, Biden tweeted out a video Tuesday night of his strongly worded response on the topic in a recent MSNBC interview.
In the 23-second clip, Biden says any interference would be a “violation of our sovereignty” and threatens “a response in kind” while pointing his finger at the camera.
Last week, Biden said at a fundraiser that he had been briefed on recent Russian and Chinese efforts, and on Monday, Biden issued a statement putting any foreign government “on notice” about attempting to interfere in the election.
A Pew Research Center poll earlier this year showed 72% of Americans say it’s very or somewhat likely that Russia or another country will attempt to interfere in the election.
Coming Up:
Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Indiana on Friday to meet with higher education officials on reopening schools.
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