COVID is 'Best Thing That Ever Happened' to Biden, Campaign Aide Reportedly Says in Book
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden bombarded the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic in the US with heavy criticism, reiterating that the latter had "no plan" on combating COVID-19. After taking office, Biden continued to blast Trump's coronavirus response.
A senior Biden campaign adviser, Anita Dunn, appeared to refer to the coronavirus pandemic in the US as "the best thing that ever happened" to Joe Biden, according to The Guardian, citing an early copy of the book "Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency".
According to the authors, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, Dunn's remark was a private comment representing what “campaign officials believed but would never say in public”. The book is set to be published next week.
Dunn, dubbed by The Atlantic as “The Mastermind Behind Biden’s No-Drama Approach to Trump”, apparently referred to how the coronavirus pandemic appeared to capsize Trump's economy and posed Biden as the right man to manage the recovery, as noted by The Guardian.
While “both Trump and Biden were comfortable with the stylistic and substantive contrasts of their … responses to the coronavirus”, the authors reportedly write in the book, “Trump led loudly, Biden calmly said Trump misled”.
Dunn was previously an adviser to former US President Barack Obama, also serving as his communications director.
Biden, who has consistently criticised Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic, earlier in the week held a solemn ceremony marking the grim milestone of half a million COVID deaths in the United States, calling on Americans to "remember those we lost and those we left behind."
In early February, the US president slammed Trump's approach to the pandemic as "even more dire than we thought".
After taking office, Biden has called on Americans to wear face masks and has rolled out a massive vaccination campaign. Some criticise the president for his response to the pandemic, particularly complaining about his support for additional lockdowns.
The United States remains the nation worst hit by COVID-19, registering over 28,300,000 cases and over 504,000 fatalities as of Wednesday.
- Source : Daria Bedenko
