Daily US Times: US President Donald Trump has said potential opponent of November election Joe Biden is “against God”, ramping up attacks on his rival and foreshadowing an ugly election battle.
Mr Trump made these remarks during a trip to Ohio, came as he tries to make up ground in the crucial Midwestern states that were his path to victory in 2016.
The president, a Republican, said: “He’s against God. He’s against guns.”
Mr Biden, an avowed Catholic, is expected to take on Mr Trump in November. Opinion polls suggest the former US vice-president currently leads.
Biden has spoken frequently about how his faith helped him cope with the deaths of his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car accident.
Andrew Bates, his campaign spokesman, said in a statement on Thursday: “Joe Biden’s faith is at the core of who he is; he’s lived it with dignity his entire life, and it’s been a source of strength and comfort in times of extreme hardship.”
The US President, who identifies himself as Presbyterian, said of Mr Biden earlier in the day in Cleveland, Ohio: “He’s following the radical left agenda.
He continued: “Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God.”
“He’s against God, he’s against guns, he’s against energy, our kind of energy,” he added.
The Republican president has been accused of using the presidential platform for political gain by injecting campaign-style rhetoric into taxpayer-funded official engagements intended to communicate US government policy.
Later on Thursday at a washing machine factory, the president kept up the onslaught on his challenger.
He said: “I wouldn’t say he’s at the top of his game.”
Mr Biden appeared to suggest on Thursday that the African-American community was homogenous – a comment Mr Trump then described as “very insulting”.
Mr Biden said in an interview: “What you all know but most people don’t know, unlike the African American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things.”
He later issued an apology on Twitter.
Mr Trump, for his part, has long been accused of stoking racial tensions, going back decades before he became a political figure.
This week, in an advertisement released by the Trump campaign, the Democrat was depicted as “hiding” alone in his basement, using an image that had been edited to remove several other people.
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