Vice President Mike Pence said Friday that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden would be a “Trojan horse” president for the radical left who would lead America down a lawless path of “socialism and decline.”
Speaking in the battleground state of Wisconsin, in the town where the Republican Party was born, Mr. Pence said the election in November is bringing the nation to a “crossroads of freedom.”
“Our road leads to greater freedom and opportunity,” Mr. Pence told an audience at Ripon College. “Joe Biden would set America on a path of socialism and decline.”
The vice president pointed repeatedly to Mr. Biden’s forging of a “unity agenda” with his vanquished Democratic primary rival, socialist Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont. At the root of their agenda, he said, “is a belief that America is driven by envy, not aspiration.”
“I thought Joe Biden won the Democratic primaries, but looking at their unity agenda, it looks to me like Bernie won,” Mr. Pence said. “Their agenda is based on government control. Our agenda is based on freedom.”
He said a Biden presidency would result in massively higher taxes, socialized medicine, an avalanche of new regulations and rising crime.
The vice president said Mr. Biden supports cutting funding for law enforcement amid nationwide protests over racial injustice, demonstrations that have often turned violent. Referring to rising violence in major cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, New York and Milwaukee, Mr. Pence called it “a frightening preview of Joe Biden’s agenda in action.”
“After years of plummeting crime rates under President Donald Trump, Joe Biden would double down on the very policies that are leading to unsafe streets and violence in America’s cities,” Mr. Pence said. “When you consider Joe Biden’s agenda and his embrace of the radical left, Joe Biden would be nothing more than an auto-pen president, a Trojan horse for a radical agenda so radical, so all-encompassing, that it would transform this country into something utterly unrecognizable.”
Biden campaign communications director Kate Bedingfield said Mr. Pence traveled to Wisconsin “to do damage control for this administration’s historic failure of leadership.”
“As V.P. Pence attempts to gloss over the Trump administration’s bungled response to the pandemic, the choice for Wisconsin voters could not be more clear,” she said. “Instead of propping up the wealthy and powerful, Joe Biden will ensure we reopen safely, get relief to those in need, and help us ’Build Back Better’ by creating millions of good-paying jobs and supporting working families across the Badger State.”
Mr. Pence acknowledged that Americans are “passing through a time of testing” with the coronavirus pandemic. He pledged that the administration is working “24 hours a day” to ensure that hospitals and health care workers get “the resources they need to give every American the same level of care that we would want a member of our family to have.”
“I have no doubt, as all of us do all that we can even in these challenging times between now and Nov. 3, we’ll see our way through,” he said. “We will heal our land, and then we will win a great victory for freedom and our very way of life.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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