Biden family selling country to China, says Trump

Washington: US President Donald Trump has accused his Democratic challenger Joe Biden of being "weak" on China and that his family was "selling" the country directly to the Chinese military.

Democratic Party's presumptive nominee Biden and his Indian-American running mate Kamala Harris are challenging President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in the November 3 Presidential election.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, Trump said, "Biden is weak on China. Yesterday, it was revealed that a fund partly owned by Joe Biden's son, Hunter, facilitated the sale of a Michigan auto parts producer to a leading Chinese military defense contractor."

Hunter Biden owns 10 per cent of Shanghai-based private-equity firm Bohai Harvest RST.

The president charged reporters that they were not reporting on the Michigan transaction. "You don't want to write about that, do you? Biden spent his entire career selling Michigan jobs to China," he said.

"Now the Biden family is selling out our country directly to the Chinese military. He didn't have a job. Now, all of a sudden, he's selling companies from Michigan to China," Trump said.

He alleged the Chinese military got American manufacturing jobs, and the Biden family got paid in return.

"I said 'If Joe Biden ever got elected, China will own America', they will own America," Trump said.

The president also accused his Democratic challenger of undermining his efforts to bring out a coronavirus vaccine.

"Joe's decision to publicly attack the China (flight) ban proved he lacks the character or intelligence or instinct to do what is right. Now, Biden has launched a public campaign against the vaccine, which is so bad, because we have some vaccines coming that are incredible," he said.

"Biden is perfectly happy to endanger the lives of other people by doing something that he thinks is going to help him politically because his polls are getting very bad. They're getting very shaky," he said.

"This was an election that was going to be very easy, very quick, and then the China virus (COVID-19) came in and I had to go back to work politically, unfortunately. I had to devote more time politically than to the other things we do, which are very important for our country. But I had to go back to work. It looks like we're going up (opinion polls) very rapidly. More rapidly than the media wants to admit," Trump said.

He alleged that when Biden was vice president, his failed approach to the swine flu was disastrous.

"His own chief of staff said that when Biden helped manage the swine flu in 2009, they, quote "did everything possible wrong." And 60 million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time," he said.

In other words, Biden's record demonstrates that if he had been in charge of this very serious, highly, highly contagious epidemic or pandemic countless more Americans would have died," Trump said.

The president predicted victory for himself in the key battleground state of Michigan, where he addressed thousands of enthusiastic supporters on Thursday.

"This is not the crowd of a person who comes in second place. You do know that," Trump told his supporters at the rally in Freeland, Michigan,

His comments were responded by euphoric chants of "Four More Years. Four More Years," which is Trump's campaign slogan.

Trump drew parallels between the last time he campaigned in the state in 2016, saying the Democrats did a "lousy job" campaigning in the state the last time and this time would be the same.

Trump said the people should vote for him as he revived the economy, stopping a number of car plant closures.

"We brought you a lot of car plants, Michigan. We brought you a lot of car plants. You know that, right? Long time. It's been a long time since you had all these plants being built, but we brought you a lot over the last three-and-a-half-years and we're going to bring you a lot more," he said.

After the COVID-19 outbreak, the American economy is now on revival mode, he said. "Now we're building it again and it's being built fast," he said.

The president said Biden will fill the state with refugees, which will diminish jobs.

"He's promised to flood your state with refugees, and you know that as well as I do and you see it all the time. From terrorist hotspots around the world, including Syria, Somalia, and Yemen, Biden's pledged to have a 700 per cent increase. He made this deal with crazy Bernie (Sanders). A 700 per cent increase in the flow of refugees. This is in their manifesto, Trump alleged.

Meanwhile, Biden has criticised Trump for withdrawing from the Iran Nuclear Deal negotiated by the Barack Obama administration. Iran is closer to a weapon now (more) than we were when we left office in 2017, Biden said at a fund raiser.

Biden said he would re-enter the deal if Iran "returns to compliance."

However, he noted that restarting talks would not be easy, and would require support from America's allies in Europe as well as China and Russia.

According to RealClearPolitics, Biden is leading in Michigan by 4.2 points and by 3.9 percentage points in the battleground states. Overall, Biden is leading in national polls by 7.5 percentage points.

(PTI)