Biden's granddaughter takes aim at Trump over coronavirus deaths

Democrat nominee’s granddaughter ridiculed president’s approach to Covid-19 and false election claims

Joe Biden’s granddaughter has taken aim at Donald Trump’s attacks on mail-in ballots, which she compared to his apparent silence on coronavirus deaths.

The US president has in recent days baselessly claimed that mail-in ballots were not “legal” and that Democrats and Mr Biden would “steal” the election, as ballots continued to be tallied in battleground states.

But as Naomi Biden pointed-out in a tweet, Mr Trump was comparably silent on the dangers of Covid-19, despite in February telling Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward it was “deadly stuff”.

In public, Mr Trump repeatedly suggested the virus would “soon disappear” and “will pass, with or without a vaccine".

Covid-19 has gone on to claim more than 230,000 American lives, and infect almost 10 million, before Tuesday’s presidential election.

Late on Thursday, Naomi Biden tweeted: “Imagine if Trump was as shocked and outraged by the record number of preventable deaths between when he learned the corona virus (sic) was deadly and when he told us as he is about the record number of mail-in ballots cast.”

That came as mail ballots delayed vote counts in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia, where Mr Biden was ahead as counting continued on Friday.

The former vice-president leads Mr Trump by more than 28,000 votes in Pennsylvania and by some 22,000 votes in Nevada, while in Georgia, a margin of a few thousand votes led officials to announce a recount.

Speaking from Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday, Mr Biden said again that he was confident of victory and that, “We're going to win this race."

Mr Trump, meanwhile, has spent the week on Twitter, sharing false claims about election “fraud”.