Biden slams Trump in new ad: ‘The death toll is still rising. The President is playing golf’

Former Vice President Joe Biden released a political attack ad against President Trump on Saturday, slamming his decision to play golf over Memorial Day weekend while the death toll due to the coronavirus continues to rise in the United States.

The 30-second video shows Trump playing golf at his Virginia club on Saturday and is interspersed with footage of people who appear to be front-line health care workers walking into hospital rooms, administering COVID-19 tests at drive-thrus and interacting with patients on stretchers.

The video also shows a red bar graph increasing in size as the number of coronavirus-related deaths hovers close to 100,000. 

“The death toll is still rising,” the ad reads. “The President is playing golf.”

Nearly 100,000 lives have been lost, and tens of millions are out of work.

Meanwhile, the president spent his day golfing. pic.twitter.com/H1BVNtgVjA

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2020

As of Saturday afternoon, the U.S. has recorded 1.6 million confirmed cases of the virus and 96,983 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

The ad released Saturday night is just the latest push from Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, framing Trump’s response to the crisis as inadequate. 

Earlier this month, the Biden campaign released an ad accusing the president of mishandling the public health crisis and the economic fallout it caused by failing to implement mitigation measures early on in the outbreak. 

“Donald Trump didn’t build a great economy. His failure to lead destroyed one,” that ad said.

The Trump campaign has also started to ramp up attacks against the former vice president, highlighting what the president’s camp says is Biden’s “friendly” stance on China.

At one point, the president said China is “desperate” for Biden to win the election.