If there’s one thing Donald Trump hates, it’s being ridiculed. Joe Biden knows this, and after having long treated his great rival with contempt, he now openly mocks him.
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On Saturday, in Seattle, the Democratic president went all out against his Republican predecessor, whom he will face in the November election.
He recalled that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump dismayed the scientific community by appearing to consider treating the virus by injecting disinfectant.
“He said, ‘Go shoot some bleach in your arm.’ It’s too stupid that he didn’t follow his own advice,” said the 81-year-old Democrat, to laughter.
Archive photo, AFP
Joe Biden had already recycled these astonishing remarks from his predecessor on bleach several times recently, to make jokes from them.
“He missed it, it all went to his hair!”, the American president said at the end of April in front of trade unionists, about this blond toupee of which the 77-year-old tycoon is so proud.
The contrast is glaring with the approach adopted for a very long time by Joe Biden, who refused even to name his great rival, only mentioned as “the guy from before” or “the former president”.
It is well and truly buried, this “Voldemort” strategy, named after the evil wizard from the series of novels and films about the Harry Potter universe, whose name must never be pronounced.
“Sleeping Don”
In his campaign team, we readily recognize that faced with Donald Trump who excels at dominating the news with sensational declarations, the challenge between now and November will be to capture attention, in the hope that the jokes will allow to convey more serious messages on the defense of democracy, the right to abortion, the economy…
Joe Biden is therefore trying to turn his favorite weapons against the former president: the use of hurtful nicknames as well as attacks on physical vigor or mental health.
Donald Trump calls him “Sleepy Joe”, “Sleepy Joe”? Joe Biden returns the courtesy, while some observers claim to have seen the Republican nosedive during his trial in New York, in a case of hidden payments to an actress and director of pornographic films.
“Please make less noise because Donald Trump is sleeping. “Sleeping Don”. I like it,” the Democrat said to his delighted supporters on Friday in Seattle.
Joe Biden also regularly attacks “broke Don”, in reference to financial difficulties encountered by his rival, or ironically about “storms” (“storms”stormy weather“) policies that its predecessor is going through, a play on words around the name of the former porn star at the heart of the legal case, Stormy Daniels.
During the journalists’ gala dinner at the White House at the end of April, he also said: “The 2024 election is in full swing and, yes, age is a subject”, before asserting: “I am an adult running against a six-year-old child.”
