Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is making his first general election campaign trip to Ohio, while President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, is at the Capitol for the first of four days of confirmation hearings.
He’ll be making remarks in Toledo on his jobs and economic recovery plan and then will attend a get-out-the-vote event in Cincinnati.
How to watch Joe Biden’s campaign trip to Ohio
What: Joe Biden travels to Toledo and Cincinnati for a speech and voter mobilization event
Date: October 12, 2020
Time: 1:15 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.
Location: Toledo, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio
Online stream: Live in the player above and on your mobile or streaming device and on cbsnews.com
On his way to Toledo, Biden told reporters Barrett’s Catholic faith shouldn’t be a factor in Democrat senators’ questioning this week.
“I don’t think there should be any questions about her faith,” he said Monday morning.
But fear that Barrett could be a deciding vote in dismantling the nation’s health care law is something he believes should be a topic of the hearings. In fact, Obamacare is a major theme of questioning Monday — each of the Democratic senators has brought it up and highlighted constituents from their states whose lives have been changed by the law.
“This nominee has said she wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act,” Biden said. “This president wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Let’s keep our eye on the ball. This is about less than one month Americans are going to lose their health insurance.”
Ohio is a toss-up, according to the CBS News Battleground Tracker, which shows Mr. Trump with 50% support, compared to 49% for Biden.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien mocked Biden Monday for traveling to Ohio to speak to a handful of people.
“Joe Biden, speaking of travel, is going to be in Ohio today speaking to literally several people on the ground — a state the president won in 2016 and is going to win again in November,” Stepien said on a phone briefing with reporters. “We are quite happy to see Joe Biden wasting a valuable day on the campaign trail in a state that he won’t win in three weeks.”
The Trump campaign is not running ads in Ohio, Trump 2020 senior adviser Jason Miller claimed on the call, because it is optimistic about the president’s prospects in the must-win state and doesn’t want to waste money in the last few weeks before Election Day.
Musadiq Bidar contributed to this report.