Dueling Closing Argument Op-Eds from Trump and Biden Make Clear Why POTUS Should Be Re-Elected
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden offered competing visions for the country in closing argument Op-Eds published Friday by Fox News.
Trump emphasized that America is on the road to economic recovery, with a clear message of keeping a good thing going and making it “bigger and better than ever before.”
Meanwhile Biden, in the spirit of his “dark winter” comment at last week’s debate, painted a very gloomy picture starting with the nearly 230,000 people who have died after contracting the coronavirus.
“Each is an American life that deserved better. And cruelest of all, we know that so much pain could have been avoided if only the president had faced reality and taken action sooner,” Biden wrote.
“One in five small business owners forced to shutter their dreams,” the Democratic nominee said.
“Cars stretched for miles in town after town, filled with proud families pushed to the brink — waiting in line, for the first time in their lives, for meal assistance. Last goodbyes to parents delivered through PlexiGlas.”
What Biden fails to acknowledge is that much of the pain caused by the pandemic has been inflicted by Democratic governors, and he is promising more of the same.
Some of the states with the highest death totals also are the ones that instituted the strictest lockdowns, including New York and California.
The unemployment rates in those states are 9.7 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
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By contrast, the high population Republican-led states of Florida and Texas each have seen a little more than half the deaths of New York, and their unemployment rates are significantly better too, at 7.6 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively.
Biden has not ruled out imposing further lockdowns to try to curb COVID-19 spikes, which will lead to further economic pain, but on a larger national scale.
By contrast, Trump opposes prolonged lockdowns.
“We have to open our country,” the president said last week. “The cure cannot be worst than the problem itself.”
New York City is “dying,” Trump argued.
Biden countered, “Take a look at what New York has done in terms of turning the curve down.”
WNBC-TV reported that New York had it highest single-day number of positive cases in months on Wednesday and also crossed the 500,000 total case threshold since the outbreak began.
So if New York is Biden’s model, and apparently it is, a Biden administration would give us both severe COVID restrictions and more job loss.
Trump painted a far more optimistic view of the country’s future in his Op-Ed.
While Biden led his piece with COVID, Trump led with the economy.
“The American people deserve so much more than what the Democratic ticket has to offer in this election,” Trump wrote. “After enduring eight disastrous years of the Obama-Biden mess, the nation deserves to enjoy eight full years of growth and economic prosperity under my administration.
“In my first three years in office, our country added more than 7 million new jobs, including more than 500,000 in the manufacturing sector,” he added. Apparently, he was able to find that “magic wand” Obama said he would need to bring manufacturing jobs back to America’s shores.
“Throughout that time, nearly 6.6 million Americans were lifted out of poverty, including nearly 2.8 million children,” Trump wrote.
Under the 45th president’s administration (pre-COVID-19), the country enjoyed its lowest unemployment rate in 50 years and the lowest ever recorded for African-Americans and Hispanic Americans.
Trump highlighted the actions his administration took to mitigate the economic pain caused by COVID, including backing the Paycheck Protection Program, which he said helped save over 50 million jobs, and direct payments to 159 million Americans.
“In total, our economy has now added back 11.4 million jobs over the last five months, and the unemployment rate has nearly been cut in half to 7.9 percent,” he wrote.
The economy also set a new all-time quarterly record for gross domestic product growth, expanding at a 33.1 percent annualized rate.
Trump concluded, “As long as I am in office, America will bounce back bigger and better than ever before. A vote for me is a vote for jobs, safety, rule of law, lower taxes, protection of your Second Amendment, and freedom.”
In contrast, Biden stated, “And it’s time we pick ourselves up off the mat and come together. If you believe America is better than what we’ve seen these last four years, I hope that you’ll cast your vote for me.”
News flash to the Democratic Party nominee: Americans picked themselves off the mat months ago. They’re marching the country down the road to full recovery, with Trump leading and cheering them on.
It is clear that if we want to keep the country moving forward, and not be diverted, it’s Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, who is the right choice.
