WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump blasted Joe Biden as a hapless career politician who will endanger Americans’ safety as he accepted his party’s renomination on the South Lawn of the White House.
Trump delivered a triumphant, optimistic vision of America’s future Thursday. But he said that brighter horizon could only be secured if he defeated his Democratic foe.
“We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years,” Trump said, referring to the former
senator and vice president’s career in Washington.
When Trump finished, a massive fireworks display went off by the Washington Monument, complete with explosions that spelled out “Trump 2020.”
His acceptance speech kicked off the final stretch of the campaign, a race now fully joined and, despite the pandemic, soon to begin crisscrossing the country. Trump’s pace of travel will pick up to a near daily pace while Biden, who has largely weathered the pandemic from this Delaware home, announced Thursday that he will soon resume limited campaign travel.
Presenting himself as the last barrier protecting an American way of life under siege from radical forces, Trump has repeatedly portrayed Biden as a tool of extreme leftists.
He mocked his opponent’s record and famous empathy, suggesting that “laid-off workers in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania” don’t “want Joe Biden’s hollow words of empathy, they wanted their jobs back.”
Both parties are watching with uncertainty the developments in Wisconsin and cities across the nation with Republicans leaning hard on support for law and order while saying Biden has not condemned the lawlessness.
Trump, who has defended his handling of the pandemic, touted an expansion of rapid coronavirus testing. The White House announced
Thursday that it had struck a $750 million deal to acquire 150 million tests from Abbott Laboratories to be deployed in nursing homes, schools and other areas with populations at high risk.
Most of the convention has been aimed at former Trump supporters or nonvoters, and has tried to drive up negative impressions of Biden. Many of the messages were aimed squarely at seniors and suburban women.
