Biden: Trump doesn't see Americans daily strife

Joe Biden is warning Michigan voters that President Donald Trump wants to strip health insurance from tens of millions of Americans with preexisting conditions. Campaigning outside Detroit on Friday, the Democratic nominee said Trump promises to protect the insurance eligibility of all Americans but in reality wants to scrap the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

That law for the first time set a federal standard that requires insurers to offer health insurance to customers regardless of their health history. Biden says Trump "can only see from his penthouse" in Manhattan and doesn't see most Americans' daily struggles.

A 2017 study from the Department of Health and Human Services found that as many as 133 million Americans could be defined as having a "preexisting" condition by the standards insurers used before the 2010 law.

Biden noted that the number could rise in the wake of the pandemic. Some patients who recover from COVID-19 have been found with lingering lung, heart or other organ damage.

Biden mocked Trump for suggesting in a Thursday town hall that the U.S. has "turned the corner" in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. 

Biden said that the virus is "not disappearing" and is instead "on the rise again." The Democratic nominee noted a COVID-19 uptick in many states and said Trump has put the U.S. on course to have more coronavirus deaths than combat deaths in World War II.

Biden said Trump "puts his supporters in such jeopardy" by holding mass rallies where masks are not required. Biden had removed his own mask to speak Friday. But he spoke in front of a small, masked crowd spread out across a community center gymnasium floor.

He asked them to recall Trump repeatedly "making fun of Biden wearing a mask." Biden has built much of his general election argument around the criticism that Trump has bungled the pandemic and its economic fallout, leading to more deaths and job losses.

He again blasted President Trump for not explicitl  condemning white supremacists and far-right anarchists like the group recently arrested for plotting to kidnap Whitmer.