Biden, Trump spar over who is tougher on China as anger rises over coronavirus pandemic

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As President Trump’s re-election campaign and a top pro-Trump super PAC step up efforts to paint Joe Biden as soft on China, the former vice president, his campaign, and an allied group are fighting back, spotlighting Trump's repeated praise of China earlier this year for its response to the coronavirus outbreak.

“The uncomfortable truth is that Donald Trump left America exposed and vulnerable to this pandemic,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee charged on Twitter Friday. “He ignored the warnings of health experts and intelligence agencies and put his trust in China's leaders instead. Now, we're all paying the price.”

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In an accompanying video, Biden emphasized that the president complimented Chinese President Xi Jinping’s actions dealing with the pandemic because "he was more worried about protecting his trade deal with China than he was about the virus that had already come to America."

The former vice president stressed that “as I speak, Chinese is censoring research on COVID-19, making it harder for the rest of us to beat the virus. President Trump is not doing enough about it. The uncomfortable truth is that Donald Trump left America exposed and vulnerable to this pandemic.”

The pushback from Biden comes as Trump’s reelection campaign and allied groups step up efforts to paint Biden as soft on Beijing and as public opinion polling shows an increasing percentage of Americans angry at China’s handing of the coronavirus outbreak.

The global pandemic originated in China and Fox News has learned that the U.S. is conducting a full-scale investigation into whether the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak first appeared.

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“@JoeBiden has a China problem,” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted on Friday. “Sleepy Joe is soft on China.”

At the same time, the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action on Friday launched $10 million broadcast and cable TV, digital and direct mail campaign titled “#BeijingBiden.” The group says their media effort will run through the end of May in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which narrowly went for Trump in 2016.

The group argues that Biden’s “been wrong on China for 40 years” and their commercials use a clip of then-Vice President Biden speaking during a trip to China in 2011 saying, “I believed in 1979 and said so and believe now a rising China is a positive development.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D- Ohio – a top Biden surrogate – told reporters on a conference call on Friday that “President Trump’s false attacks on Vice President Biden are just another attempt to distract from the president’s failure to stand up to China for American workers and for more importantly and more immediately today his failure to prepare our country for the coronavirus pandemic.”

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The pro-Biden outside group American Bridge announced on Friday that they’re launching a $15 million campaign to counter the America First Action ad. The group said they’ll spend $2 million the next two weeks to run a commercial in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin targeting Trump.

“Everyone knew they lied about the virus. China. President Trump gave China his trust,” the narrator in the spot says.

The ad then uses a video clip from Feb. 7 of the president saying of China, “I think they’re doing a very good job.”

Trump repeatedly criticized his predecessor, Barack Obama -- whom Biden served as vice president -- for hampering the current administration’s efforts to combat the coronavirus.

“Many administrations preceded me. For the most part, they did very little,” the president said at a White House coronavirus briefing on March 21. A day later Trump charged that “we inherited a broken, obsolete, system.”

Biden, in his video, pushed back against the president.

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“President Obama and I oversaw the launch of a program, literally called 'Predict.' It gave us early warnings for outbreaks in China and around the world of this kind of disease,” Biden said. “President Trump eliminated that program. We had a strong CDC presence in Beijing to sound the alarm when necessary. President Trump cut the number of CDC staff in China by more than two thirds.”

Former Obama administration foreign policy and national security adviser Tony Blinken – who’s advising Biden’s campaign – told reporters: “President Trump undid or undercut virtually all the programs and people the Obama – Biden administration had put in place to prevent, detect, or deal with a pandemic originating in China.”

Fox News' Madeleine Rivera contributed to this report.