Trump Mocks Biden For Pledging To Defer To Public Health Experts On Coronavirus

Biden said during an interview with ABC News in August that he would be willing to shut down the U.S. economy entirely if he were advised by public health experts to do so, later saying there would be “no need” for such a hypothetical to occur after Trump slammed him for his initial answer as the “Biden shutdown” in his GOP Convention speech.

Biden has frequently pitched himself as a president who would be far more deferential to public health experts on coronavirus than Trump, who has at times been accused of ignoring their advice or strong-arming them for political reasons.

On Monday, Trump boasted that the U.S. is an “absolute leader” on combating the virus – despite a world-leading death toll of at least 185,000 that continues to tick up – and touted economic recovery after a historic drop in employment and GDP.

Trump once again took aim at Biden for his pledge to defer to public health experts, claiming “Biden’s plan for the China Virus is to shut down the entire U.S. economy,” adding that he will “totally rely on somebody to walk up [and say], ‘yes sir, it’s time to shut it down.’”

Such a move, Trump said, would cause millions of lost jobs and “countless deaths from suicide, substance abuse, depression, heart disease and other serious illnesses.”

Trump also accused Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris of “reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric” and “endangering lives” for refusing to pledge to take a vaccine put out by the Trump administration; Harris has expressed concern about politicization of the drug approval process and said she would “would trust the word of public health experts.”