If you want to know why no one showed up at a campaign event on Saturday for Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris, Politifact says, don’t listen to Trump supporters.
Instead, take at face value the campaign’s explanation. It didn’t invite supporters because of the “pandemic.” So no one showed up because no one was invited.
That doesn’t explain why Biden supporters didn’t line the streets spontaneously to support their candidate.
Meanwhile, in Toledo on Sunday, Biden spoke at a car rally — while vociferous Trump supporters heckled him.
Yesterday, Biden told a reporter that if voters think they’re better off than they were four years ago, they should vote for Trump.
All in all, it hasn’t been a good couple of days for Sleepy Joe.
No One Showed?
The tweeted and retweeted report from Fox News in Phoenix, Arizona, seems clear enough.
“It’s kinda boring out here,” says the affiliate’s Nicole Garcia. “So it’s not your typical presidential campaign event. We don’t see people rallying outside. We don’t see signs, or really much of what’s going on.”
Garcia then said Biden’s campaign people “kind of kept the details about the visit, as far as the timing and the exact locations, and pretty much all of the people that we saw enter into the parking lot, about 45 minutes ago, were with the Biden-Harris campaign and the pool reporters.”
But Politifact, the leftist Poynter Institute’s “fact-checking operation,” claims the video was sneakily edited to exclude the full story:
I’m told by one of the Biden staffers, local staffers, is that they kind of kept the details about the visit, as far as the timing and the exact locations, they didn’t really want to give that out to the public because they want to keep the crowds to a minimum. They realize we are in a pandemic and they don’t want a crowd of more than 50 people at any of their events.
So, right now, here at the Heard Museum in central Phoenix meeting with tribal leaders, and pretty much all of the people that we saw enter into the parking lot, about 45 minutes ago, were with the Biden-Harris campaign and the pool reporters.
True enough, but Politifact omitted the rest of Garcia’s report, which noted the event was important because Biden and Harris campaigned together for the first time since the Democratic National Convention.
“This is technically a big event, but not a lot of fans,” she said.
Obvious question: Why didn’t Biden’s campaign people let word leak so Biden’s fans could at least line the streets with flags and signs in the battleground state?
Politifact might have expressed at least some skepticism about the campaign’s “pandemic” claim, but alas, the campaign in question was Biden’s, not Trump’s.
“Four More Years”
Arizona aside, Sunday in Ohio wasn’t a good day for Biden, who regaled a small gathering of voters sealed in their vehicles.
“@JoeBidenbrings his economic message to Toledo, Ohio where [his] main message besides selling his ‘Build Back Better’ plan to union members gathered at the drive-in is promising to never turn his back on them like Pres. Trump has in the last several years,” NBC’s Marianna Sotomayor reported.
Biden also falsely accused Trump of “panicking” after “his own positive diagnosis,” she reported. “His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis has been unconscionable,” he said.
But more significant than Biden’s speech and his sparse crowd was the hostile contingent at the union rally, Sotomayor tweeted:
Dozens of Trump supporters were loudly chanting a mix of “Four more years,” “Trump” and “USA” throughout the event, growing louder anytime @JoeBiden mentioned the president.
“There were more protesters than attendees,” replied one user.
Vote For Trump
In an interview Monday, a reporter in Cincinnati asked Biden why people should vote for him given a recent Gallup poll that showed 56 percent of Americans believe they are better today than four years ago under the Obama-Biden regime.
“Well if they think that, they probably shouldn’t,” Biden replied. But then, again, they don’t really remember how good they had under the Obama years:
They think 54 percent of the American people believe they’re better off economically today than they were under our administration? Well, their memory is not very good, quite frankly.
Neither is Biden’s. At the car rally in Toledo, Biden again said he is running for the Senate, and before that, failed to remember Senator Mitt Romney’s name.
