Biden campaign fires Trump's lines of attack back at him

Four years after the Covid pandemic sent America into a standstill, President Joe Biden’s campaign is looking to co-opt a common question posed by former President Donald Trump and his allies: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Trump asked his 6.7 million followers on Truth Social that question earlier this week, using it to drive contrasts between Biden and Trump’s records on the economy and the border. But the Biden-Harris campaign plans to highlight key moments from four years ago in an effort to flip the question back onto Trump, seeing a golden opportunity to exploit his handling of the pandemic.

The Biden campaign made a statement Friday morning highlighting Trump’s pledge four years ago to the day to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act, roughly 10 days after the World Health Organization formally declared Covid a global pandemic.

“Four years ago today, Trump was trying to throw millions of Americans off their insurance while Americans were dying by the thousands of Covid-19, even more Americans were infected, and hospitals were reaching a breaking point,” Biden-Harris senior spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.

On Thursday, the campaign released a digital ad that paired images from the early days of the pandemic with audio of Trump suggesting disinfectant as a treatment, downplaying concerns over the number of Covid-related deaths at the time, and dismissing questions from reporters about his handling of the crisis.

And Biden is test-driving the strategy on the stump while speaking at fundraisers in Texas.

“Just a few days ago, he asked the famous question, 'Are you better off today than you were yesterday?' Well, Donald, I’m glad you asked that question,” Biden said during a campaign