The Biden team is furious with President Trump for going at the former VP during an address in the Rose Garden. Members of the media, the pundit class and the Woke Blue-Checks are all screaming that it was a campaign speech, and therefore a violation of the Hatch Act. What they are really upset about is that Trump showed Biden as weak on China, and the Midwest might take notice.

On China, Biden started his campaign by saying they were nothing to worry about. During a campaign rally in 2019, Biden noted:

China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man…they can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west.

As author and pundit Gordon Chang rightly noted, “He’s absolutely incorrect…one can argue that China doesn’t pose for instance a robust challenge to the US, we can argue that we will prevail. But to say as the vice president said that they’re no competition to the US is just inexplicable.”

Trump argued that Biden’s positions on the environment have been not only expensive, but a “gift” to China:

As vice president, Biden was a leading advocate of the Paris climate accord, which was unbelievably expensive to our country…It would have crushed American manufacturers while allowing China to pollute the atmosphere with impunity, yet one more gift from Biden to the Chinese Communist Party.

Trump then lumped Biden in with former President Barack Obama:

So Joe Biden and President Obama freely allowed China to pillage our factories, plunder our communities and steal our most precious secrets,” Trump said, adding, “I’ve stopped it largely.’”

Of course, the media pundits came to Biden’s rescue, lambasting the President for having a “political rally” instead of a press conference.

Trump soiled the WH Rose Garden with that performance. Presidents do not use the Rose Garden in that kind of naked political fashion. That was not a press conference, as the WH described it. It was a campaign rally disguised as a press conference. It was a bait and switch.

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 14, 2020

“Soiled.” He actually said “soiled.”

Biden’s people tried to respond by being too cute by half:

…but there was one topic that President Trump couldn’t seem to get off his mind: Joe Biden, whose name the President invoked nearly 30 times. The whole sad affair says more about Donald Trump than he said about any particular topic.

They quickly changed their tune when they realized the damage the Rose Garden presser had done. They now argue that President Trump should reimburse taxpayers for using the press conference as a campaign rally! From Biden spokesperson Katie Bedingfield:

What we heard in the Rose Garden today wasn’t a president at all. It was a politician who sees his re-election slipping away from him and who is furious that his own botched response to the coronavirus pandemic has denied him the campaign events he so craves…The American taxpayer should be reimbursed for the abuse of funds this spectacle represented.

It’s already clear to Americans across the Midwest – in must-win states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio – that Biden (or his team) are afraid of debating President Trump. They know, like Biden’s team knows, that the odds of the former Vice-President to be able to handle a 90-minute debate without debilitating gaffes – or worse! – are very small. But for Trump to remind Midwest Mainstreet of Biden’s weakness on China, and foreign policy as a whole, is damaging to Biden’s spurious claim that he can rebuild the economy; especially as trade and manufacturing become of even more importance in a world financially damaged by coronavirus.

Trump may avoid the Rose Garden for a while, but the damage to Biden is already done.