Wednesday, January 22, 2025
10.0°F

The Latest: At DNC, Jill Biden to speak of family struggles

Columbia Basin Herald | UPDATED 4 years, 5 months AGO
| August 18, 2020 3:30 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jill Biden will offer a personal glimpse into her family’s struggles and vouch for her husband’s ability to lead the nation through adversity during remarks at the Democratic National Convention.

According to advance remarks, she plans to say Tuesday night: “There are times when I couldn’t imagine how he did it — how he put one foot in front of the other and kept going.” She adds, “But I’ve always understood why he did it. ... He does it for you.”

Jill and Joe Biden have faced considerable personal loss. Biden’s first wife and infant daughter were killed in a 1972 crash. Jill and Joe Biden faced tragedy together when son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.

Mrs. Biden will speak about what it takes to “make a broken family whole”: “The same way you make a nation whole. With love and understanding — and with small acts of compassion.”

Mrs. Biden will also speak about her work as a teacher. She’s delivering the speech from her former classroom at Brandywine High in Wilmington, Delaware.

___

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION:

— Democrats' Day 2 focus: Trump's global leadership deficit

— Here’s what to watch on the second night of the convention

— Cindy McCain details husband’s friendship with Biden for DNC

— At DNC, Jill Biden to get personal about family's struggles

___

Follow AP’s election coverage at https://apnews.com/Election2020

___

HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

Cindy McCain is going to bat for Joe Biden, lending her voice to a video set to air during Tuesday night’s Democratic National Convention programming focused on Biden’s close friendship with her late husband, Republican Sen. John McCain.

In an advance clip from the video shared with The Associated Press, Cindy McCain talks about how then-Delaware Sen. Biden met her husband when John McCain was assigned to be a military aide for the senator on a trip overseas.

Cindy McCain is not expected to offer an explicit endorsement, but her involvement in the video is her biggest public show of support yet for Biden’s candidacy.

Both Cindy McCain and her daughter Meghan have been outspoken critics of President Donald Trump, and the family is longtime friends with the Bidens. Trump, a Republican, targeted John McCain personally in 2015, saying the former prisoner of war wasn’t a hero “because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

___

Democrat Joe Biden says virtual gatherings are the conventions of the future and that he doubts they will go back to what they did before the coronavirus pandemic.

The presumptive presidential nominee made the comment Tuesday while addressing an online group of delegates from Florida.

He called this week’s virtual Democratic National Convention “the most creative, inclusive convention we’ve ever had.” He says, “I doubt we’ll ever go back to the same, exact convention we had in the past.”

Also on Tuesday’s call, Biden questioned whether President Donald Trump is smart enough to be president. Biden says he used to think Trump was “callous,” but now thinks “he’s just not smart enough to know what to do.”

The Democrats’ original convention in Milwaukee was delayed from July until August and scaled back amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The Republican Party will hold its own virtual convention next week.

___

Former President Jimmy Carter is making his first appearance at a presidential nominating convention in eight years.

Organizers of the Democratic National Convention announced Tuesday that Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, would address attendees at the virtual gathering that evening.

The 39th president, 95, did not attend the 2016 convention in Philadelphia. He did record a speech for the 2012 gathering, which was broadcast in prime time on that convention’s second night.

Democrats opened this cycle’s nominating convention on Monday night with a keynote from former first lady Michelle Obama. Other speakers scheduled for Tuesday include Jill Biden, wife of former Vice president Joe Biden, and former President Bill Clinton.

___

Former Secretary of State John Kerry is condemning President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as he prepares to address the Democratic National Convention, saying the United States "is not the leader of the free world.”

Speaking online to reporters during the daily convention briefing Tuesday, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee said, “The world does not have a leader in the free world at this moment.”

Kerry faults Trump for pulling away from traditional European allies and failing to have a cohesive foreign policy strategy. He says French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are “casting about trying hard.”

Kerry says no one easily replaces what former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and others "have frequently reminded people is the indispensable nation.”

Kerry was secretary of state during President Barack Obama’s second term.

___

The third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House says that Black people should not be blamed for any violence that has erupted during the summer’s protests following George Floyd's death.

Majority Whip Jim Clyburn told Fox News Channel's “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday “that is not who I am, that is not who we are,” of the outbursts that have occurred amid mostly peaceful protests across the country.

Clyburn is the highest-ranking Black member of Congress. He spoke a day after his remarks at the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, where he advocated for former Vice President Joe Biden as a president who could unite the country following what he characterized as four divisive years under President Donald Trump.

Clyburn says the protest efforts were undertaken by those “trying to make this country be a better place for our children and our grandchildren." He says, “We’re aren’t trying to burn it down — we’re trying to build it up.”

Democrats convene virtually Tuesday for the convention’s second night, with remarks from Jill Biden and former President Bill Clinton.

___

President Donald Trump is pushing back against former first lady Michelle Obama, claiming that her husband’s Oval Office performance is what catapulted him into the White House.

In her remarks Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, Mrs. Obama declared Trump was “in over his head” and the “wrong president for our country.”

In tweets Tuesday morning Trump taunted that someone should explain to her that he wouldn’t be in the “beautiful White House” today if it “weren’t for the job done by her husband,” President Barack Obama.

He also criticized the Obamas for making a “late and unenthusiastic endorsement” of Joe Biden. And in other tweets, Trump criticized Obama and Biden’s handling of the H1N1 swine flu in 2009 and claimed, without evidence, that the Obama administration was the most corrupt in history.

Trump ended with a sarcastic thanks to Michelle Obama for her “very kind words.”

MORE IMPORTED STORIES

The Latest: Cindy McCain video on Joe Biden to air at DNC
Columbia Basin Herald | Updated 4 years, 5 months ago
The Latest: Colin Powell to promote Biden's values at DNC
Columbia Basin Herald | Updated 4 years, 5 months ago
The Latest: Guard who met Biden in elevator to nominate him
Columbia Basin Herald | Updated 4 years, 5 months ago