Trump uses RNC speech as an unprecedented attack on Joe Biden

(Image credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

published 28 August 2020

President Trump's Republican National Convention speech was as much about Joe Biden as it was about him.

Trump closed out the RNC on Thursday night with some of his most direct and harshest attacks on the Democratic nominee yet. In fact, Biden was mentioned 41 times in Trump's prepared remarks — far, far more than the record eight times former President George W. Bush mentioned former President Bill Clinton in 1992, the Washington Journal's George Condon notes.

Many of those mentions focused on what Trump called Biden's "made in China" platform, and they weren't exactly accurate. For example, Trump's continued insistence that "I have done more in three years for the black community than Joe Biden has done in 47 years" doesn't quite line up with Biden's massive polling lead among Black Americans. Trump's mention of Biden's support for the Iraq War isn't exactly a slam dunk either, seeing as Trump and Vice President Mike Pence also supported it.

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In claiming "China supports Joe Biden," Trump was seemingly exaggerating a report that said China would prefer Biden win because it sees Trump as "unstable." Biden also doesn't want to "abolish the production of American oil, coal, shale, and natural gas," at least not for another 30 years; didn't say he "absolutely" wanted to cut law enforcement funding; and definitely hasn't "vowed to ... close down charter schools" — all of which Trump claimed Thursday.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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