Via/AP
When former President Donald Trump said, “I don’t care about you,” to a gathering of rally attendees, he may have been kidding, but President Joe Biden saw it as a fantastic idea for a new campaign commercial. During Trump’s weekend campaign stop in Las Vegas, several attendees at his rally in Arizona were hospitalized because of the intense heat. Instead of empathizing, Trump went on to joke about it, as reported by Mediaite.
Addressing the crowd gathered outside in triple-digit temperatures on Sunday, Trump remarked, “By the way, isn’t the breeze nice? Do you feel the breeze? I don’t want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.” He then predicted, “[N]ow the press will take that, and they’ll say, ‘he said a horrible thing.’”
The press and the Biden-Harris campaign indeed seized on this, releasing a new advertisement featuring only Trump’s statements and Biden endorsing them. At the same speech, Trump also quipped that he’d prefer to be electrocuted than attacked by a shark, referred to those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 as “warriors,” and falsely accused police officers of a “set-up.”
Over the last week, the Biden team has released several videos attacking Trump over his controversial remarks, according to The Hill. On June 7, the campaign attacked him over remarks he made about veterans in a video. On June 6, the campaign released an advertisement with three veterans criticizing Trump for being a “draft dodger” and claiming he is unqualified to be commander in chief on the anniversary of the D-Day landings.
The president’s advertisement is significant for the state of Nevada, where, according to an aggregation of Decision Desk HQ/The Hill polls, he is now trailing Trump with 45.6 percent compared to the former president’s 49 percent. Nevada, which Biden won in 2020 with over 50% of the vote compared to Trump’s 48%, is a crucial state for him to win in 2024.
A recent survey suggests that President Biden’s best chance of winning a second term is by running as the “Stop Trump” candidate. According to a CBS News/YouGov survey, among Biden supporters, resistance to Trump was a bigger motivator than support for the president (54 percent vs. 27 percent).
Another 19% of potential Biden supporters claimed that the president’s status as the Democratic nominee was the only reason they felt compelled to support him.
The Biden team emphasizes that the campaign will not be limited to only criticizing the 45th president. “People who want to vote for Biden because they can’t stand Trump are perfectly fine,” Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh said. “There are a whole lot of issues for the Biden campaign that make this election difficult — prices, inflation, the economic piece, the housing piece, and having two overseas conflicts that are very difficult to deal with. Those are much more important challenges.”
