In spite of rising calls from Democrats for him to withdraw from the race and the impact from his Covid-19 diagnosis, US President Joe Biden has declared that he will fight rival Donald Trump in the re-election campaign.
Biden is scheduled to spend the remainder of the week in isolation at his Delaware home after testing positive for COVID-19 a few days ago.
“Donald Trump’s dark vision for the future is not who we are as Americans. Together, as a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the ballot box,” Biden (81), said in a statement issued by his campaign on July 19, a day after Trump (78), formally accepted his party's presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
The president also criticised Trump's July 18 night keynote speech at the Republican National Convention.
"For over 90 minutes, he focused on his own grievances, with no plan to unite us and no plan to make life better for working people,” said the president referring to Trump's speech. “He avoided mentioning his Project 2025 agenda, but still proudly flaunted the worst of MAGA (Make America Great Again) extremism," Biden said.
Americans know exactly where he wants to take this country, Biden said. The Biden-Harris campaign alleged that despite promising a call for unity and toned-down rhetoric, Trump’s speech was a 90-minute reel of his greatest hits: focused entirely on him-self, lashing out at his enemies, laying out his grievances, and riling up his base with inflammatory extremism.
Just before making statements in Las Vegas on July 17, Biden received a diagnosis of COVID-19, which has kept him out of commission since then. He quickly ended his journey and took a plane to his beach house. There is still disagreement among Democrats over whether Biden can defeat Trump in November, and at least ten of them joined the chorus on July 19 demanding that Biden step down.