Trump accuses Biden of being a socialist opposed to religion. These are the reasons why it is completely false

By Andrea López-Cruzado

How against God can a Roman Catholic be?

How closely related are Catholicism and socialism?  

One might start by asking those two questions to try to determine - with some logic - if what Republicans say about Joe Biden is possible. 

The president, Donald Trump, has accused Biden of being against God and on Friday, in a meeting with Latinos in Florida, he assured that the Democratic Party had been "completely taken over by socialist and extremist forces of the left." 

Is all that true?

The short answer is no, but let's get to the facts.

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In recent weeks, several Spanish-language media outlets in Florida have given their space to the distribution of false information about Biden.We are not going to break down all the things that have been said because many are so extravagant and far from reality that it seems irresponsible to us repeat them.

We will concentrate, however, on two of the statements that have sounded the most, and that seem relevant to the Latino population both for their religious profile and for their political history.

Cradle catholic

It's common to hear Biden refer to his Catholic upbringing and how his faith in God helped him overcome tragedies in his life, such as the car accident in the early 1970s in which his first wife and 1-year-old daughter died, and the 2015 death of her oldest son from brain cancer.

The candidate for the White House was raised in the Catholic faith and is the one he practices.

He studied at Catholic schools and married his first wife in a Catholic church in New York.

After being widowed, he remarried his current wife, Jill, in a ceremony officiated by a Catholic priest in a chapel in New York City.

In Greenville, Delaware, where he has a house, it is common to see him at Mass on Sundays.   

In April 2016, then-Vice President Joe Biden met Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Reuters

His encounters with John Paul II and Pope Francis, whom the then vice president accompanied during his tour of the United States in 2015, speak of Biden's closeness to the Catholic Church.

Four years ago, Biden received the Laetare Medal, awarded each year by the University of Notre Dame and considered the highest distinction to Catholics in the United States.    

Appealing to the Catholic community as one more member of it, Biden even has an initiative dedicated to that group: Catholics for Biden.

On her campaign website, the page dedicated to attracting donations from Catholics is framed with a photo of Biden and Pope Francis, both looking into each other's eyes.

The picture is no coincidence: Catholics supporting Biden cite the openness Pope Francis has shown in his years in the Vatican to advocate for Biden, a pro-abortion Catholic.

 Socialist Biden?

Another of the ideas that Trump has most wanted to spread, especially in Florida, is that Biden is "a puppet of the radical left" and the "Trojan horse of socialism." 

On Wednesday, at a ceremony to honor those who died in Cuba's failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Trump said that the Democrats, led by Biden, are unleashing socialism in the United States and exclaimed: “We are not fighting the tyranny abroad to let the Marxists destroy our country ”.

Trump intensifies his campaign in Florida in search of the Latino vote

Sept.

25, 202000: 34

It is a message that particularly resonates with Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants or their descendants in Florida, where — especially the former — they are a considerable key electoral bloc.

Biden has repeatedly denied that he is a socialist, a claim supported by his nearly 50-year political career as a moderate Democrat.

He has also cited his victory over Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, his opponent in the Democratic primaries, to mark distance from socialism.   

Republicans have tried to link Biden to two of the Democratic proposals that they consider socialist, the

, a plan to fight climate change that was introduced to Congress by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and "Medicare for all." a health plan promoted by Senator Bernie Sanders that would replace private health insurance with a federal program that would cover most Americans.

[With misleading data, they promote that legal immigration is cut in half]

Although Biden sees the

as "a crucial framework to address our climate challenges," his plan against global warming leaves out some of the more extreme proposals being pushed by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, including the ban on

, the controversial drilling technique to extract gas and oil.

Biden also opposes Sanders' health plan, as he has stated on several occasions. 

In response to Trump's claims, Biden's campaign is turning the tables, and he has a message for Cubans and Venezuelans: Trump is the dictator you guys fled from.

In an undemocratic stance, the president has not yet wanted to commit to accepting the result of the November 3 elections.  

Why is winning Florida so important?

Florida has voted for the winner in 11 of the last 12 presidential elections.

In fact, he has been successful in almost 80% of the 30 presidential elections in which he has participated, electing both Democratic and Republican candidates. 

Florida's unpredictability in presidential races coupled with its frequent winning bets have made the state one of the most contested by White House hopefuls, and perhaps that also explains the waves of misinformation the war has unleashed by its voters.

Whether Trump will be able to win Florida like in 2016 or whether Biden will emerge victorious remains to be seen.

According to a recent poll of likely voters, only four percentage points separate the candidates: 51% for the president, 47% for Biden. 

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