Stopping by a key swing county in the battleground state of Nevada on Tuesday, President Joe Biden sought to draw a sharp contrast between himself and former President Donald Trump.
While going on to run through a list of distinctions between the pair on domestic policy issues and foreign affairs, Biden on Tuesday made the case that “the bottom line” between the two men is a “different value set.”
“Look, the bottom line is when you think about it, all of us in this room have one fundamental difference between us and Trump,” Biden told supporters in Reno on Tuesday. “I mean this sincerely – we have a different value set.”
Biden mentioned reports that Trump once called dead U.S. service members “suckers” and “losers” – something Trump has denied.
“I just, I’ve never heard a president say the things that this guy has said,” Biden said. “But the difference is, he means them. He means what he says.”
The president went on to declare to local volunteers that Trump wants to “undo everything we’ve done,” including enabling Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices at home and expanding the NATO alliance on the world stage.
“This guy is talking about [Russian President Vladimir] Putin like he is his long-lost buddy, which he is” Biden charged, noting Trump said he would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO member countries that do not contribute enough to military spending.
Biden’s stop at the Washoe County Democratic Party headquarters came exactly one week after he and Trump clinched their respective parties’ nominations for president in 2024, setting up a rematch between the 2020 rivals in November.
“We’re gonna beat him again,” Biden declared to supporters gathered.
Tuesday’s stop marked Biden’s first event during a packed three-day campaign swing in the southwest this week.
The president is set to deliver remarks in Las Vegas on Tuesday on housing costs before visiting a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona, to launch the campaign’s strategy to reach Latino voters ahead of November. On Wednesday in Phoenix, Biden will speak about his administration’s infrastructure investments. He will then make his way to Dallas on Wednesday and Hosuton on Thursday for campaign receptions.
The battleground state tour is a part of the campaign’s “Month of Action” following Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this month. Biden’s team said the president will visit every swing state in March. He already notched stops in the key so-called “blue wall” swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. He also made the trip to Georgia, which he flipped blue in the presidential race in 2020 for the first time in decades.
Campaign officials said on Monday that Biden’s trip and their ground game through the fall will focus on their organized labor advocacy in union-ladened Nevada, the Biden administration efforts on immigration and border security in the two border states, and the fight for abortion rights and access to reproductive health care.
“The fact is that there is a reason why we are doing so well,” Biden said of the economy. “It is because of union labor.”
“The president will spend this week in the Sun Belt states of Nevada and Arizona – diverse, pro-choice states that are gaining hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs thanks to the president’s policies,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a public memo on Monday outlining their strategy and message.
In Nevada, Trump has beat Biden in nearly every poll since last June, with recent ones showing him winning by double-digit margins. In 2020, Biden won Nevada by less than three percentage points.
“This county and this state is really, really, really critical,” Biden said on Tuesday.
Spectrum News' Joseph Konig contributed to this report