US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made an upbeat show of unity on Thursday as they held their first joint public event since Harris replaced the president as the Democratic Party’s candidate in November’s US presidential election.
Chants of “Thank you, Joe” rang out from the audience at a community college in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington.
Biden announced a major deal to reduce medication prices for retirees on social welfare programs.
Photo: AFP
However, the biggest star was Biden’s vice president, who has surprised many by uniting the Democratic Party and surging in the polls against former US president Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, since her abrupt entry into the White House race.
“She can make one hell of a president,” Biden said of Harris.
Shortly after the joint appearance, Trump delivered rambling and often angry remarks from his New Jersey golf club, before taking questions from a handful of journalists.
Harris has a “very strong communist lean” and would mean the “death of the American dream,” he said.
The real-estate billionaire and scandal-engulfed former president has struggled to pivot his campaign since Biden dropped out on July 21 amid Democratic concerns that he lacked the stamina at 81 to do the job.
Until then, Trump was rising steadily in the polls, in large part on his message that Biden was losing his mental acuity — a charge that gained currency when the president badly flubbed a televised presidential debate against his predecessor.
At his golf club event, the 78-year-old Trump began by reading lengthy statements from a binder notebook.
Ostensibly scheduled to attack Harris on inflation, with household products piled high on a table next to him, he almost immediately veered off into a series of complaints about the media and insults at Harris, who he said is “not smart.”
BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: The planned transit by the ‘Baden-Wuerttemberg’ and the ‘Frankfurt am Main’ would be the German Navy’s first passage since 2002 Two German warships are set to pass through the Taiwan Strait in the middle of this month, becoming the first German naval vessels to do so in 22 years, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. Reuters last month reported that the warships, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main, were awaiting orders from Berlin to sail the Strait, prompting a rebuke to Germany from Beijing. Der Spiegel cited unspecified sources as saying Beijing would not be formally notified of the German ships’ passage to emphasize that Berlin views the trip as normal. The German Federal Ministry of Defense declined to comment. While
‘REGRETTABLE’: TPP lawmaker Vivian Huang said that ‘we will continue to support Chairman Ko and defend his innocence’ as he was transferred to a detention facility The Taipei District Court yesterday ruled that Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) be detained and held incommunicado over alleged corruption dating to his time as mayor of Taipei. The ruling reversed a decision by the court on Monday morning that Ko be released without bail. After prosecutors on Wednesday appealed the Monday decision, the High Court said that Ko had potentially been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Ko did not speak to reporters upon his arrival at the district court at about 9:10am yesterday to attend a procedural
The Executive Yuan yesterday warned against traveling to or doing business in China after reports that Beijing is recruiting Taiwanese to help conceal the use of forced Uighur labor. The government is aware that Taiwan-based influencers and businesses are being asked to make pro-Beijing content and offered incentives to invest in the region, Executive Yuan acting spokeswoman Julia Hsieh (謝子涵) told a news conference. Taiwanese are urged to be aware of the potential personal and reputational harm by visiting or operating businesses in China, Hsieh said, adding that agencies are fully apprised of the situation. A national security official said that former Mainland
DRONE DEFENSE: The military plans to invest nearly NT$6.9 billion in a Chiayi County campus to serve as a production center for domestically developed UAVs, an official said The Ministry of National Defense plans to use a proposed aerospace and uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) industry campus to produce military drones, a defense official said yesterday. The campus in Chiayi County’s Minsyong Township (民雄) would receive nearly NT$6.9 billion (US$216.12 million) to build factories, hangars and UAV testing facilities, the ministry’s budget proposal submitted last month to the Legislative Yuan showed. The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, the ministry’s research and development arm, is to oversee the project, it said. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the defense official said the information disclosed by the report suggested that the campus would serve