Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden called President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic “almost criminal” at a Friday town hall.
“This is almost criminal, the way he’s handled this,” he said, per the Washington Post, at an event for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
He added that “there’s going to be some form of second wave, I hate to tell you this.”
“You have Trump saying, ‘Open up, open up, open up.’ Why do you want to open up?” Biden said. “He does not care about the public health. He wants to open up because he wants to say the economy’s growing and the stock market’s going up.”
Biden introduced a multi-part plan to reopen the economy this week, including extensive testing. He also wants to increase the health care workforce with 100,000 new contact tracers, later to be shifted to other jobs in the industry.
Trump is holding a rally in Tulsa in June, for which all prospective attendees had to sign a waiver promising not to sue the President if they catch the disease. The rally was initially planned for Juneteenth but was moved “out of respect.”
