The Biden campaign on Thursday ripped former President Trump’s convention speech as a rambling attempt to mask his “extreme vision” for a second term, while touting President Biden’s intention to stay in the race.
Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon in a statement sought to connect Trump to Project 2025, a controversial policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation that Trump and his team have aggressively tried to distance themselves from.
“Tonight, Donald Trump rambled on for well over an hour and failed to mention Project 2025 even once,” O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “He failed to mention how he had inflicted pain and cruelty on the women of America by overturning Roe v Wade. He failed to mention his plan to take over the civil service and to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists.
“He sought to find problems with America, not to provide solutions. But after all, it was Donald Trump who destroyed our economy, ripped away rights, and failed middle class families,” she continued. “Now he pursues the presidency with an even more extreme vision for where he wants to take this country.”
O’Malley Dillon argued President Biden is running “for an America where we defend democracy, not diminish it. Where we restore our rights and protect our freedoms, not take them away.”
“The stakes have never been higher. The choice has never been more clear,” she said. “President Biden is more determined than ever to defeat Donald Trump and his Project 2025 agenda in November.”
Trump’s convention address went on for longer than 90 minutes and was essentially two speeches in one. There was the opening 20 minutes in which he recounted the assassination attempt over the weekend in which he was hit with a bullet in the ear, and there was the remainder of the address that was essentially a rally speech that meandered from topic to topic as he went off script.
The former president’s keynote address came as Biden faces increasing scrutiny from Democrats over whether he should remain atop the ticket in November and whether he can defeat Trump.
Further complicating matters, Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday and is isolating in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
He and his campaign have given no indication he intends to drop out of the race.