President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response team may have an unusual member soon — former Vice President Joe Biden, his presumptive rival in this year’s 2020 presidential election.
Trump said he’s open to working with Biden — if Biden is willing to give him a call.
“Oh, absolutely, I’d love to speak to him, sure,” Trump said Wednesday. “I always found him to be a nice guy.”
“I don’t know him very well, frankly, but he’s probably a nice guy,” he continued. “If he’d like to call, I’d absolutely take his call. OK, you can tell him, all right?”
In typical Trump fashion, the president snuck in a “Sleepy Joe” reference during his comments on the Democratic presidential candidate.
Trump has also shot back at Biden’s criticism of his travel ban from China in recent days.
“I made a decision to close off to China – that was weeks early,” Trump said a few days ago. “And, honestly, I took a lot of heat. Sleepy Joe Biden said it’s xenophobic. I don’t know if he knows what that means, but that’s OK. He said it’s racist, what I did.”
Still, the president affirmed he was willing to put politics aside and welcomed a Biden phone call.
Biden’s team confirmed the former vice president would reach out and offer Trump what he can.
“Our teams will be in touch and we will arrange a call,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, who confirmed late Wednesday evening.
The bipartisan gesture didn’t stop the Trump campaign from running a Biden ad on Twitter, however. The ad seems to show the former Vice President calling the Wuhan virus a “hoax” through selective editing.
The Trump campaign said it was created to point out the double-standard the social media platform practices. Twitter has declined to remove a selectively edited anti-Trump ad where the president seems to call the virus a hoax.
Trump never said that the virus was a hoax, his campaign pointed out.
You can see the short ad here —
The media is giving a pass to a pro-Biden TV ad that doctors and deceptively edits audio of President Trump, even though every independent fact checker said President Trump DID NOT call the coronavirus a hoax.
Joe Biden, on the other hand? This sounds authentic… pic.twitter.com/YY6vN5gTM6
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) April 2, 2020