Talk about losers: The top moments from CNN’s kid-gloves town hall with Biden

Author : keiko12

Publish Date : 2020-12-19 08:09:53

Talk about losers: The top moments from CNN’s kid-gloves town hall with Biden

For the second time this week, a presidential candidate fielded questions from voters in a town hall setting. But if ABC’s event with President Donald Trump was an icy grilling, CNN’s drive-in conversation with Joe Biden Thursday was more like an affable reunion of old acquaintances.

“Chief, didn't I meet you when you were chief?” Biden said through a half-smile, pointing at the man preparing to ask him a question. Bill Barrett, a retired police chief who is in his fifth term on city council, wanted to know how Biden will address growing violence in cities and the lack of respect for police and the military.

Barrett confirmed that, yes, they’d met when he was chief. And so it went with several other questioners and Biden during a 75-minute homecoming close by to where the candidate spent his youth.

Trump had few such comfortable moments in his brutal town hall: For his first time as president, regular people got the chance to call him out on his boasting and exaggerations. Biden, by comparison, got a "total pass," the Trump campaign complained afterward, in a typical lashing of the media. The Democratic nominee made the most of the friendly confines, relaying feel-your-pain anecdotes in mostly grammatical syntax and, until the last half-hour, with high-energy.

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The back-to-back town halls helped shape the contours of the upcoming debates in a presidential contest where Biden has maintained a steady lead in battleground states.

Here’s a look at the key moments from Thursday night.

Scranton vs. Park Avenue

Trump has maintained an unshakable appeal among a segment of working-class Americans —a group he used to refer to as the “super elite” (“We got more brains, we got better houses, apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter,” he told supporters in the summer of 2018.). Biden, a product of Scranton, had made some inroads with the cohort, but on Thursday, he used an answer in which he acknowledged his own white privilege to more overtly frame the race between him and Trump as one of class differences.

“I really do view this campaign as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue,” Biden said. Turning folksy, Biden said all the people out there who are “busting their necks” — all they want is a fair shot.

“And guys like Trump, who inherited everything, and squandered what they inherited, are the people that I have always had a problem with, not the people who are busting their neck,” Biden added.

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But Trump couldn't care less, Biden said: "All that President Trump could see from Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about is the stock market.”

It was a direct reference to Trump’s answers on Tuesday, when George Stephanopoulos pressed him on the uneven economy that continues to favor the affluent over working people. “George,” Trump said, “stocks are owned by everybody,” pointing to retirement plans and other investments.

“How many of you all own stock in Scranton?” Biden asked Thursday. “Not a whole lot of people own stock.”

Biden then sounded a more personal note about people who grew up in places like Scranton. He said he was used to people turning up their noses “at us,” “who look at us and think that we're suckers, look at us and they think that we don't — we're not equivalent to them.”

“Well, I tell you what bothered me, to tell you the truth. Maybe it's my Scranton roots. I don't know,” he continued, “But when you guys started talking on television about, ‘Biden, if he wins, will be the first person without an Ivy League degree to be elected president,’ I'm thinking, who the hell makes you think I have to have an Ivy League degree to be president?”

Covid contrast

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Pressed by voters on Tuesday, Trump described presiding over a roaring economy that only slowed at the onset of the “plague,” his term for the coronavirus. In the same event, the president claimed that he “up-played” the threat of the virus, despite admitting in taped interviews with Bob Woodward that he purposely downplayed it.

He said the virus would eventually subside due to “herd mentality,” when health experts believe reaching herd immunity without the help of a vaccine would mean an enormous death toll. And in the days since the ABC town hall, Trump directly contradicted the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by incorrectly contending that face masks are a “mixed bag” and that a vaccine will arrive on a far quicker timeline than the CDC official estimated.

All of this played into Biden’s hand, and he worked the contrasts hard. For much of the early part of the night, he tee

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Talk about losers: The top moments from CNN’s kid-gloves town hall with Biden

Scranton vs. Park Avenue

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