President Biden ribbed rival Donald Trump as “defeated-looking” on Tuesday, the second day of jury selection in the former president’s Manhattan trial over concealing 2016 hush money payments.
“Just the other day, a defeated-looking guy came up to me and asked if I could help. He was drowning in debt. And I said, ‘I’m sorry, Donald, but I can’t help you,’” Biden told a small crowd in his birth city of Scranton, Pa.
Biden, 81, did not directly mention the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, against Trump, 77, for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal his reimbursement of then-attorney Michael Cohen.
“I have to say, if Trump’s stock in the Truth Social company drops any lower, he might do better under my tax plan than his!” Biden added at his campaign event, further ridiculing the presumptive Republican nominee.
Biden visited his childhood hometown to contrast himself with his billionaire rival, who grew up in a wealthy family in Queens.
“People like Donald Trump learned very different lessons. He learned the best way to get rich is inherit it. Not a bad way!” Biden said.
“He learned that paying taxes was something people who work for a living did, not him. He learned that telling people ‘you’re fired’ was something to laugh about. I guess that’s how you look at the world when you’re at Park Avenue or Mar-a-Lago.”
Biden, again referencing Trump’s long-running former reality show “The Apprentice,” said that in Scranton “being told ‘you’re fired’ wasn’t entertainment, it was a nightmare that people worried about.”
Trump attacked Biden earlier in the day as he arrived to court — where he will be the first US president ever to face a criminal trial.
“This is all coming from the Biden White House because the guy can’t put two sentences together. He can’t campaign. They are using this in order to try to win an election,” Trump said.
“And it’s not working that way. It’s working the opposite way.”
Pennsylvania is expected to once again be a pivotal swing state and both Biden and Trump are visiting it often — with Trump drawing massive crowds to rallies, including on Saturday at Schnecksville, in the nearby Lehigh Valley.
In 2016, Trump carried Pennsylvania by just 44,292 votes out of more than 6 million cast.
In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by 80,555 votes out of nearly 7 million ballots counted.
The current RealClearPolitics average of recent polls has Biden ahead by 0.1% in Pennsylvania.
Trump leads in recent polling averages of the other high-profile swing states, including Arizona (by 4.5%), Georgia (by 3.8%), Michigan (by 2.8%), Nevada (by 3.2%) and Wisconsin (by 0.6%).
