Biden warns of 'dark winter' due to Trump coronavirus response

Joe Biden warns Americans of a 'dark winter' to come due to President Trump's coronavirus response.

Video Transcript

- Vice President Biden, your reaction. And just 40% of Americans say they would definitely agree to take a coronavirus vaccine if it was approved by the government. What steps would you take to give Americans confidence in a vaccine if it were approved?

JOE BIDEN: Make sure it's totally transparent. Have the scientists of the world see it, know it, look at it, go through all the processes. And by the way, this is the same fellow who told you this is going to end by Easter last time. This is the same fellow who told you that, don't worry, we're going to end this by the summer. We're about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter. And he has no clear plan. And there's no prospect that there's going to be a vaccine available for the majority of the American people before the middle of next year.

- President Trump, your reaction. He says you have no plan.

DONALD TRUMP: I don't think we're going to have a dark winter at all. We're opening up our country. We've learned, and studied, and understand the disease, which we didn't at the beginning. When I closed and banned China from coming in, heavily infected, and then ultimately, Europe, but China was in January, months later, he was saying I was xenophobic, I did it too soon. Now, he's saying, oh, I should have moved quicker.

But he didn't move quicker. He was months behind me, many months behind me. And frankly, he ran the H1N1 swine flu. And it was a total disaster-- far less lethal. But it was a total disaster. Had that had this kind of numbers, 700,000 people would be dead right now. But it was a far less lethal disease. Look, his own person who ran that for him, who, as you know, was his chief of staff, said it was catastrophic, it was horrible. We didn't know what we were doing.

Now, he comes up and he tells us how to do this. Also, everything that he said about the way every single move that he said, we should make, that's what we've done. We've done all of it. But he was way behind us.

- Vice President Biden, your response.

JOE BIDEN: My response is he is xenophobic, but not because he shut down access from China. And he did it late, after 40 countries had already done that. In addition to that, what he did, he made sure that we had 44 people that were in there in China trying to get to Wuhan to determine what exactly the source was. What did the president say in January?

He said, no. He said this is-- he's being transparent, the president of China is being transparent. We owe him a debt of gratitude. We have to thank him. And then what happened was, we started talking about using the defense act to make sure we go out and get whatever is needed out there to protect people. And again, I go back to this. He had nothing-- he did virtually nothing. And then he gets out of the hospital. And he talks about this Is-- oh, don't worry, it's all going to be over soon. Come on! There's not another serious scientists in the world who thinks it's going to be over soon.