‘We’re just trying to survive the chaos.’ Jill Biden blasts Trump in Macon speech
At a brief campaign stop in downtown Macon on Monday afternoon, Jill Biden, the wife of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, described her husband as the anti-Donald Trump.
With polls showing Georgia very much in play in the race for the White House — and perhaps even a dead heat — with a week to go until the election, she urged supporters to head to the polls.
“We actually have a chance to turn Georgia blue,” she said.
“Could not be more different”
During a 12-minute speech, Jill Biden said, “Joe could not be more different than the man who holds that office right now.”
The remark drew applause for the former second lady who, sporting a red dress, spoke at a Georgia Women for Biden event, where 40 or so invitees gathered outside the Tubman Museum at the foot of Cherry Street.
Perhaps twice that many supporters and onlookers lined Fifth Street across from the nearby Terminal Station.
“Donald Trump is a man who has spent his lifetime attempting to distort his way into success, prestige and, most of all, profit,” Jill Biden said.
“Again and again, he tells us a story about this country, that truth doesn’t matter, that decency doesn’t matter, that our voices don’t matter. He wants us to believe that that’s who we are — hateful and angry and divided. But he’s wrong. Isn’t he, Macon, Georgia?”
Macon introduction
Jill Biden had moments earlier been introduced by Karla Redding-Andrews, daughter of the late singing great, Otis Redding, who is vice president and executive director of the Otis Redding Foundation. The Foundation promotes music-and-arts education in and around the Macon-raised soul icon’s home region.
Redding-Andrews spoke of the word “respect,” and how her father had penned the song, “Respect,” made famous by Aretha Franklin.
“Today that simple word is something I’m just not seeing in the world,” she said. “Respect is something that is so needed today. ... I have one message of respect for all of you today: vote. Vote as if your life depends on it, because in this election it really does.”
Jill Biden applauded Redding-Andrews for helping turn her famous father’s musical legacy “into a movement to give the gift of music to so many children.”
The pandemic response
Jill Biden then went on to mention hardships of parents juggling to hold jobs and raise families during the coronavirus pandemic, be they working from home or on the front lines of the COVID-19 response.
“They’re worried about paying their bills and whether their children will be safe when they go to school,” she said. “We aren’t divided. We’re just trying to survive the chaos of Donald Trump’s America.”
Next she painted a picture of what she described as “Joe Biden’s America,” one where the morning headlines aren’t “about some late-night tweet storm.”
But instead about about education, of universal pre-K, of “millions of good-paying jobs being created,” and better health insurance, “where everyone gets care that they can afford.”
She called her husband a president “you can trust, a president for all Americans, someone who makes us proud, who brings out the best in us.”
Before heading to another campaign event in Savannah, she said, “Eight more days. ... This it. There are no do-overs. We can’t sit back and watch what happens. We have to decide what happens.”
This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 6:12 PM.