President Trump attacked rival Joseph R. Biden on Friday at a forum on Venezuela, saying “nobody will be safe in a Biden America” because the Democrat would hand over the country to a “socialist mob.”
Saying that many people in Venezuela and central America have fled failed socialist countries for the U.S., the president said “Joe Biden and the radical left are trying to impose the same system, socialism-plus, in America.”
“Biden is a puppet of Bernie Sanders, AOC and the militant left,” Mr. Trump said, referring to liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. “The people that want to rip down statues and monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Jesus — they want to rip down statues to Jesus.”
Accusing Mr. Biden of siding with leftists who want to defund police departments, Mr. Trump said, “Nobody will be safe in a Biden America, but Biden doesn’t know what a Biden America is.”
“If you ask him to define it, he wouldn’t even know what it is, but other people do,” the president said. “Biden wants to defund the police. He wants to call the cops the enemy, which he did the other day, leaving every citizen at the mercy of a socialist mob, or a mob far worse than socialism was ever meant to be.”
He said of the movement on the left, “we’re dealing with a group of people that — they will not win. It will not win at all. But this election coming up is a very important one.”
Seeming to refer to his trailing Mr. Biden in public polls, Mr. Trump said, “I’m fighting against this horrible situation, I’m fighting and I’m fighting hard.”
“I want the Republicans to get strong and tough, and I want people that agree with me on the Democrat side, of which there are many,” the president said. “I think we’re gonna have a tremendous Democrat surge.”
He said he is doing well “in the real polls.”
“We reviewed polls this morning, with different states,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re doing very well, by the way, in the state of Florida.”
The president said Mr. Biden “will have radical people” running his administration, and that even his eventual running mate “won’t have as much to do with running the country as you believe.”
Mr. Biden called Mr. Trump’s trip to Florida “a photo-op and a distraction from his failures” during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Just like his response to this pandemic, the president has been unreliable and self-centered in his approach to the issues closest to the Venezuelan people,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “As president, I promise to take real action to help the Venezuelan people by granting Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans already in the United States, leading an international response to address the humanitarian situation affecting millions of Venezuelans, targeting government officials and their cronies involved in corruption and human rights abuses, and restoring democracy in Venezuela and aiding in the country’s long-term recovery.”
