It's Trump Vs Biden

Barack Obama’s former right-hand man is taking on Donald Trump in the US presidential election. So how do they square up?

- Jane Vorster

The fight is on. Come November – barring an unforeseen turn of events – it will be Joe Biden taking on Donald Trump in the 2020 US presidential election. And experts are predicting it’s going to be brutal.

They’re both well into their seventies and prone to putting their foot in it with embarrassing verbal gaffes – but that’s where the similarities end.

Having served more than three decades as a senator and two terms as vice president, Biden needs no introduction to voters – for eight years he was President Barack Obama’s loyal sidekick.

And experts believe that out of all the contenders in the running to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, the veteran politician is the one who Trump least wanted to go up against.

But after Bernie Sanders (78) recently bowed out of the race, Biden was the last man standing and now he and Trump are gearing up to go head-to-head. How it will turn out is anyone’s guess.

At the start of the year, with the American economy booming and the senate voting to acquit Trump on impeachment charges relating to him allegedly abusing his power to swing the 2020 election in his favour, the president seemed invincible.

But as the coronavirus pandemic has taken hold, he’s come in for criticism for his slow response in dealing with the crisis. Instead of taking decisive action he initially insisted that Covid-19 wasn’t a serious problem and refused to put the US into lockdown out of fear of what it would do to the economy.