Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has blasted President Donald Trump for his decision to play golf during the holiday weekend as the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic continues to rise in the United States.
The Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee showed in a 30-second clip accompanying his tweet on Saturday that Trump was playing a round of golf at his club in the US state of Virginia on Memorial Day Weekend.
“Nearly 100,000 lives have been lost, and tens of millions are out of work,” the former vice president said in his tweet. “Meanwhile, the president spent his day golfing.”
The death toll is still rising,” read the ad, which has garnered over 1.3 million views. “The president is playing golf.”
The golf trip was the president’s first visit to one of his money-making properties since March 8, when he visited his private golf club in West Palm Beach during a weekend at his Florida home.
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11, and Trump followed with the national emergency declaration two days later.
Trump has ordered US flags on federal buildings and national monuments to half-staff through Sunday in memory of the Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus
US Democrats have criticized Trump since the epidemic erupted in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, saying he has failed to develop a comprehensive and effective plan for testing Americans for the coronavirus and tracing contacts of those who are infected by the virus.
Biden has on several occasions censured Trump since the outbreak started in the United States in February, framing the US president’s response to the crisis as inadequate.
In another ad released earlier this month, the Biden campaign accused Trump of mishandling the epidemiological crisis and the economic fallout it caused by failing to implement containment measures sooner.
Virologists say people who contract the coronavirus in the US are at greater risk than those in the UK or Canada since America lacks a national health service.
The US has recorded over 1.6 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 98,000 deaths from the flu-like pathogen, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
