Joe Biden is ‘the candidate of lockdowns’: Trump campaign

now to some key numbers as the president blitzes the battlegrounds the real clear politics average of polls has him trailing Biden in Michigan and Wisconsin by nine points and five points respectively as you can see on the screen Biden also ahead in Nebraska’s congressional district two by uh congressional district two I should say by seven points that it is considered a toss-up and it’s where the president is heading today let’s uh bring in Tim Murtagh trump 2020 communications director Tim great to have you here this morning we, of course, have a lot of questions but first what is the mood of the campaign seven days out especially after I just read through those polls there well the mood is fantastic we

are definitely upbeat and very cautiously optimistic that the president is headed for re-election we know what’s going on in these battleground states from our own internal data and we know that in the states that are going to make the different states like Florida and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin the president remains strong and is headed quite clearly to re-election if you’re looking at these public polls and even the average it’s just a bunch of averages of flawed polls the national news media has spent four years trying to destroy and defeat president trump and so i don’t know why anyone would put any stock at all in polls paid for by those exact same media organizations of course they’re

going to produce numbers which confirm their own world view and then you take the average it’s just an average of all those bad stuff so I get that you’re going to dismiss we know what’s real I get that you’re dismissing the polls as we’ve often heard from the campaign um that there are real numbers that we can look at including some of the positivity rates in these states that the president is visiting today where coronavirus is still a very real concern and Joe Biden is still strongly polling above the president when it comes to who would handle the pandemic better in Michigan Ohio Pennsylvania and Wisconsin Tim Wisconsin’s positivity rate seven days moving average 28 Nebraska 22 in Wisconsin it’s up

53 over the last two weeks positive cases this morning the ap is writing worst place worst time trump faces virus spike in the midwest as he heads to these states so why talk about the lockdowns rather than battling the virus itself when he addresses voters there well the president is battling the virus itself and this is another area where there’s a clear contrast between the two trumps and Biden president trump wants to he wants people to be safe and take precautions but he also knows that we cannot let the virus just lock us down again he has been in a nine-month battle against the virus and has posted a whole bunch of victories and a lot of good news the production of ppe and masks now the development of the

therapeutics rem deserve being approved by the FDA we are this close to getting a vaccine approved and for distribution and it would go first in 100 million doses to our most vulnerable populations contrast that with joe Biden who is clearly the candidate of lockdowns he talked about how we’re facing a dark winter that is not an optimistic message if you’re talking about locking people down again for how long six months a year 18 months remember in china they welded people into their homes i mean does he recommend a similar style approach i don’t know okay if you head the country towards another lockdown lock the economy down it would be devastating to people maybe if you’re talking about salary

or if you can work from home you can get by with that but you cannot survive if you are in the service industry if you work with your hands you can’t stay locked up in your house for another prolonged period and joe Biden is offering exactly that and that message does resonate with some voters obviously who are restricted by these shutdowns but joe Biden sees a serious opportunity here with joe Biden yesterday really taking on the president and his coveted response listen Saturday Donald trump said that cobra 19 count wasn’t really going up everything was leveling out he suggested the doctors were inflating the numbers catch this because doctors get more money what in the hell is the

the matter with this man it’s is this message working for joe Biden uh no and it shouldn’t because this is the same Joe Biden that we know would not have restricted travel from china like president trump did because he called it xenophobic and fear-mongering and so we know with certainty that we would be in a far worse position today as a country if Joe Biden had been president at that time and joe Biden look throughout all of this joe Biden has been completely unburdened by the responsibility of leadership every minute of this crisis he has taken the coronavirus and turned it into a political weapon even to the point of trying to scare people away from taking the life-saving vaccine when it is ready and approved and on

the market for people to get which by the way people will be receiving for free under the trump administration he spends all of his time trying to frighten people away from taking the vaccine that is reckless it’s taking something that is so important to saving lives making people afraid of it that is endangering people’s lives simply to score political points it’s reckless and irresponsible i want to leave that there and i want to head to immigration nowhere was the president yesterday talking about the border we’re going to defend our borders they don’t want to have borders they want to have open borders we just hit 400 miles of war and this is a wall that’s exactly what border patrol and all of the law

enforcement people wanted where is the messaging when it comes to immigration the border the wall it dominated the 2016 trump campaign tim and here’s a headline in the wall street journal front page this morning trump campaign tones down immigration messages that dominated 2016 election it says the issue barely makes the top 10 list of topics highlighted in political tv ads it was a wall street journal review that found it was the fourth most mentioned issue in his 2016 campaign but has barely cracked the top 10 this cycle around was that a concerted effort to transition away from that topic that did so well for the president in 2016 Tim no and as a matter of fact the sound bite from the president you

just played proves that that’s not the case the president still talks about this issue at every single rally just about and it sets up a very clear contrast yet again no one can mistake that president trump is the candidate who will enforce our borders enforce our immigration laws protect American workers and commun keep our community safe by opposing sanctuary cities as well joe Biden, on the other hand, promises an open borders policy he said for the first hundred days if he’s elected he won’t deport anybody and then after a hundred days he would deport only those illegal aliens who had committed felonies he would grant amnesty to 11 million illegal aliens give them all taxpayer-funded health care and provide them work permits so they can compete with Americans for jobs that they need coming out of the

coronavirus crisis on top of that joe biden will support sanctuary cities which is a slap in the face of these communities and people in those towns and cities who want safe streets it is absolutely still a big issue and it’s no wonder that some parts of the media want to say it’s being taken away as an issue but the president talks about it all the time and we’ll continue to i’m running out of time i have so many things i want to ask you about but when it comes to the economy axios ran a headline on the front page of their website this week that president trump does not have a plan on the economy he talks about a big beautiful tax cut but but it’s but we haven’t really got real details from the campaign will we hear more in

the coming days will he get more specific about those tax cuts and what his plan is to do to get us out of this rut that we’re in due to the pandemic voters know that the president built the world’s best economy once and is already doing it a second time his approach has always been to keep taxes low allow people to make more decisions for themselves about how to spend their own money that they’ve earned keep regulations low get government out of the way of entrepreneurs get government out of the way of farmers so farmers can thrive what do you have on the other side you have joe biden the president said it at the top of this scenario main place what does that tax cut look like what is the specifics i will i will let as you know the campaign doesn’t write legislation the president’s goal is to keep taxes low he has talked about further

cutting taxes for the middle class he has often talked about allowing people to keep more of what they earn making it cheaper for businesses to hire people and look at what joe biden is offering raising the corporate tax rate that’ll make it more expensive to do business in the united states than it is in china another case of joe biden looking out for china ahead of american workers plus raising taxes by four trillion dollars if your question is who’s better on the economy we welcome and in fact we are dying for that argument because it is quite clearly president trump and it’s not even close even the bad public polls show that president trump is the leader on the economy he built the world’s best economy once he’s already doing it a second time joe biden is a disaster voting for now i’ve got to leave it there about china we’re out of time but please come back soon thank you