President Trump on Monday swiped at Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, arguing during a rally in Pennsylvania that foreign leaders want the former vice president back in office to take advantage of him.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Montoursville, Pa., Trump invoked Biden as he railed against past policies on trade.
“He announced he’s running for president and he said it’s because foreign leaders called him up and begged him to do it,” Trump said. “Absolutely. Foreign countries liked it much better. That’s what they want. They want Biden so that China can continue to make 500 billion a year and more, ripping off the Untied States.”{mosads}
Politico reported in March that foreign leaders had been approaching Biden to ask whether he intended to enter the race, telling the former vice president that he could restore alliances that have been shaken under Trump.
Trump has been fixated on Biden since the former vice president entered the race, tweeting repeatedly about him and predicting that he would be the eventual Democratic nominee.
Pennsylvania will serve as a crucial swing state in the 2020 election. Trump won Pennsylvania narrowly en route to victory in 2016, but a Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed Biden at 53 percent and Trump at 42 percent in a head-to-head match-up in the state.
The president mocked the size of the crowd at Biden’s official campaign launch in Philadelphia.
Trump, whose administration falsely claimed his inauguration was the best-attended of all-time, asserted that the former vice president only drew “150 people” to his kickoff event. Estimates put attendance at Biden’s event in the thousands.
The president then hinted that he would hold on official re-election launch of his own in the near future.
“We have thousands of people and I’m not even announcing today,” he said. “We’ll wait for a couple of weeks, OK?”