Republicans launch multi-pronged attack on Biden

New York: Having renominated US President Donald Trump for a second term, Republicans launched a multi-pronged attack on the Democratic candidate Joe Biden at their national convention, asserting that he was a proxy for the radical left and whom China wants elected.

Addressing the convention on Monday night, the President's son Donald Trump Jr. said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) favoured Biden's election because he won't be as tough on Beijing as his father is.

Nikki Haley, the first Indian-American to serve on the US cabinet, said that Biden would be controlled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Squad - a group of four left-wing women members of Congress. She said that Biden had a "record of weakness" and his election would be "great for Communist China".

At the morning session during which Trump was renominated, he said that China would "own" the US if Biden was elected. Speakers at the evening session defended Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, bringing testimonies from a surgeon who survived the disease and a woman who had benefited from experimental use of medicines like what the President has been advocating for treating the disease.

Trump's record on the pandemic which has resulted in about 180,000 deaths in the US has been one of the key points of the Democratic Party's attack on him. The voluble radicals in the Democratic Party and the Black Lives Movement that has at times sparked violent riots and looting provided the Republicans with ammunition.

A couple who had brandished firearms as Black Lives Matter protesters marched menacingly by their house spoke at the convention. Patricia McCloskey said: "Your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats' America,"

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the national chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee, said the Democrats "want to destroy this country, and everything that we have fought for and hold dear" and added" "Rioters must not be allowed to destroy our cities."

The movement that started against police brutality, has led to calls for cutting funds for police and abolishing police departments.

One speaker challenged the Democratic Party leaders to give up their armed guards and instead hire social workers. While Haley said that it is a lie to say that the US is "racist", two African-American lawmakers crticised Biden's record on race. Vernon Jones, a black legislator from Georgia, said that the Democrats were taking the community for granted.

"We are free people with free minds" who were out of the "mental plantation" of the Democrats, he said. Jones is a Democrat and he was the convention's riposte to the Republicans who appeared at the Democratic Convention. Tim Scott, an African-American Senator, said: "Joe Biden said if a Black man didn't vote for him, he wasn't truly black... It was Joe Biden who said poor kids can be just as smart as white kids."

He noted that Biden had crafted the 1994 crime law that led to large numbers of African-Americans being given long sentences for relatively minor offences and pointed out that Trump had signed a law nullifying its worst aspects.