Text on the screen accuses Biden of having “protected China’s feelings” just before Biden is shown calling out “hysterical xenophobia.” The implication is that Biden opposed Trump’s ban on travel from China to slow the spread of COVID-19. Except he didn’t. At any point. When Biden said “hysterical xenophobia,” he wasn’t talking about those travel restrictions. Elsewhere in the ad, Biden is shown saying: “Banning all travel will not stop it.” Except the full quote was: “Banning all travel from Europe, or any other part of the world, may slow it, but as we have seen, it will not stop it.”
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake tracks these and other massive pieces of dishonesty in the video, but one of the most interesting bits is the comparison between what it attacks Biden for saying about China and what Donald Trump has said.
”They’re not bad folks, folks,” Biden is shown saying, which is supposed to make us very angry that he doesn’t hate Chinese people enough. “They’re very smart, and they’re good people,” Donald Trump said in 2017. “I’m also standing with President Xi. He’s a friend of mine. He’s an incredible guy,” Trump said in 2019. “I like China. The Chinese people are phenomenal people,” Trump said on Tuesday, presumably as his campaign was putting together this ad attacking Biden for saying: “They’re not bad folks, folks.”
We’re to be angry that Biden said: “It is in our self-interest that China continue to prosper.” Trump has said: “And, by the way, I want China to do well” and “I want China to do well; I don’t want them to do as well as us,” (hmm, is that a statement about “our self-interest?”) and: “So let today be the beginning of a brighter future, more prosperous for the American people, the Chinese people, and the world.”
How dare Biden share a toast with Chinese president Xi and say “what a beautiful history we wrote together” when what he was supposed to say, by the Trump standard, was: “Keeping these two giant and powerful nations together in harmony is so important for the world—not only for us, for the whole world.” Among other things.
This ad is all about stoking racism, not only toward China but toward Chinese-American (and by extension, other Asian-American) people. It is trying to use racist divisiveness to attack Biden using an unwieldy mess of lies about novel coronavirus and alleged corruption, most of it pinned onto Biden saying exactly the same sort of stuff when he was vice president that Trump has said again and again. And it comes at a time when Asian-American people are facing physical violence—and buying guns to protect themselves—in part thanks to exactly this kind of stuff from Trump.
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