On Thursday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s national press secretary claimed that Biden supported President Donald Trump’s January 31 travel ban on China over the coronavirus, but is that claim really true?
While Biden didn’t explicitly condemn Trump’s China travel ban in so many words, he never explicitly supported it either — and he appeared to condemn it without mentioning it directly, the Washington Free Beacon pointed out.
No direct support for China travel ban
On the day the travel ban was announced, Biden said of Trump during a campaign appearance: “We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.”
But probably the most direct evidence that Biden did not in fact support the China travel ban comes from a tweet Biden posted the same day:
Donald Trump’s Muslim ban is a direct betrayal of America’s most fundamental freedom: religious freedom. And now he’s adding more countries to his list of who’s not welcome in America.
It’s not who we are — and we’ll prove that when we beat Trump this November and end the ban. pic.twitter.com/qdlU5P7MZQ
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 31, 2020
Nothing in that tweet can be construed as support for the China travel ban — and in fact, it demonstrates that while Biden may not have said the words “I don’t support Trump’s China travel ban,” his real message was loud and clear.
Again, on March 12, Biden tweeted: “A wall will not stop the coronavirus. Banning all travel from Europe — or any other part of the world — will not stop it.”
That doesn’t sound like support of coronavirus-related travel bans, either.
Monday-morning quarterbacking
The trouble with Biden’s position on the coronavirus is that it’s nothing more than Monday-morning quarterbacking because he has been out of power since it began.
And the thing about Monday-morning quarterbacking is, everyone knows it’s much easier to tell people what they did wrong after the fact than it is to be the one who has to go through it in the first place. Monday-morning quarterbacks don’t make mistakes, but that’s because they aren’t decision-makers and don’t have opportunities to make them.
No one really knows what the Monday-morning quarterback would have done in the actual quarterback’s place, because he wasn’t in his place. And it’s way too easy to tell everyone what you would have done when you will never have to actually do it.
Biden may or may not support Trump’s coronavirus travel bans now, but he was all too happy to criticize them at the time Trump had to make the very difficult decision to cut off travel from China, and later Europe — both of which turned out to be very good decisions, as Biden can now agree.
The post Biden's claim of supporting Trump's coronavirus travel ban is dubious at best first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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