Politics

Biden says Trump is 'going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at me,' after Hunter Biden stories spark Facebook, Twitter backlash

Key Points
  • Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden warned campaign donors that President Donald Trump is "going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at me" during the 19 days remaining before Election Day.
  • Biden spoke a day after The New York Post ran a series of disputed articles about him, his son Hunter Biden and a Ukraine energy executive. Facebook and Twitter took steps to thwart the spread of the articles on their respective platforms.
  • Biden and a major Democratic fundraising site have raised record amounts of donations in recent months, dwarfing the tally from a major Republican fundraising site.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at United Association (UA) Plumbers Local 27 in Erie, PA, October 10, 2020.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden warned campaign donors on Thursday that President Donald Trump is "going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at me" during the 19 days remaining before Election Day.

Biden told attendees that he expects additional "lies and distortion" to be directed at him by the Trump campaign.

Biden spoke a day after The New York Post ran a series of articles claiming that he had met with a Ukrainian energy executive at the behest of his son Hunter Biden who was a board member of the executive's company, Burisma. The supposed meeting allegedly came months before then-Vice President Biden pressured Ukraine government officials to fire a prosecutor who purportedly was investigating the company.

The claim that the prosecutor was conducting such a probe at the time has been debunked.

Biden did not mention the Post's report at Thursday's event but did refer to "misinformation" about him.

"I know these are anxious times," Biden told the fundraising attendees.

"I appreciate everything you're doing for the campaign," he said. "We have 19 days left, and you know, he's going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at me."

But, he added, "I think you've put me in a position to be able to respond in real time in a way that we can compete."

Biden and a leading Democratic fundraising site have significantly outraised a Republican site in the recently finished financial quarter, yet another sign of trouble for Trump, who is badly trailing Biden in national polls.

Biden has denied speaking with his son about Hunter's work for Burisma, and the Biden campaign said there is no record of such a meeting.

A copy of the computer hard drive supposedly owned by Hunter Biden that is the basis for the Post's report was given to the newspaper by Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Were Facebook, Twitter right to restrict distribution of the New York Post story about Biden?
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Were Facebook, Twitter right to restrict reach of New York Post story about Biden?

George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said in a statement Thursday, "We have no idea where this came from, and certainly cannot credit anything that Rudy Giuliani provided to the NY Post, but what I do know for certain is that this purported meeting never happened."

Biden's presidential campaign on Wednesday said that multiple investigations, including probes by two Republican-led Senate committees, have found that Biden "carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing."

"The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story," he added. "They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani — whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported — claimed to have such materials," said Andrew Bates, a Biden spokesman.

But the Republican incumbent Trump and his allies since Wednesday have repeatedly highlighted the Post's stories, and blasted the social media giants Facebook and Twitter for taking steps that limited the spread of the articles' contents on their platforms.

Biden announced Wednesday that his campaign brought in $383 million in donations during September, a bit more than his campaign's record-breaking haul in August. Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said that the campaign had more than $400 million on hand entering October.

ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising website, on Thursday revealed that it processed $1.5 billion in donations made from July through September.

ActBlue's tally was more than double the more than $620 million in donations during the same time period processed by WinRed, the Republican fundraising site.

Trump's campaign has not revealed fundraising numbers for September.