Obama: Trump is "jealous of COVID's media coverage"
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Former President Barack Obama launched a blistering attack on President Trump while campaigning for Joe Biden in Orlando on Tuesday, criticizing Trump for complaining about the pandemic as cases soar and joking that he's "jealous of COVID's media coverage."
Driving the news: Trump has baselessly accused the news media of only focusing on covering the coronavirus pandemic — which has killed over 226,000 Americans so far and is surging across the country once again — as a way to deter people from voting on Election Day and distract from other issues.
What he's saying: "What's his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID. He said this at one of his rallies —'COVID, COVID, COVID,' he's complaining," Obama said.
- "He's jealous of COVID's media coverage. If he had been focused on COVID from the beginning, cases wouldn't be reaching new record highs across the country this week."
- "If we were focused on COVID now, the White House wouldn't be having its second outbreak in a month. ... He's turned the White House into a hot zone."
The big picture: Obama, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, has been out campaigning for Biden in the final stretch of the election season. He urged Floridians on Tuesday to "reclaim" American values like democracy, science and tolerance by voting Trump out of office.
- "Joe and Kamala, when they're in office, you're not going to have to think about them every single day," Obama said at one point.
- "You're not going to have to worry about what crazy things they're going to say, what they're going to tweet. They're just going to be too busy doing the work."
- "You'll be able to go about your lives knowing that the president's not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world."
The other side: Trump tweeted as Obama was speaking, "Now @FoxNews is playing Obama’s no crowd, fake speech for Biden, a man he could barely endorse because he couldn’t believe he won. Also, I PREPAID many Millions of Dollars in Taxes."
