Biden wants to talk to Trump about lessons learned

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden says he wants to speak with President Donald Trump so that hopefully the president can "learn some lessons" from the Obama Administration on how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.

"We've been through this in a slightly different way in the past, and I hope they can learn some lessons from what we did right and maybe what we did wrong," Biden said during a virtual press briefing on Thursday afternoon.

Biden's aides have said they're working to arrange a phone call with President Trump to address his coronavirus response. The president said Wednesday he would "love" to speak with the former Vice President.

The prospective Democratic presidential nominee has touted his work in addressing the Ebola Crisis that unfolded in 2014 as a possible model for how the federal government should deal with the current pandemic. But the current coronavirus outbreak has sickened and killed exponentially more individuals nationwide, with the infection rate topping 1 million on Thursday.

In recent weeks, Biden has offered his own proposals for dealing with the outbreak, which include expanding healthcare access, bolstering banks' lending ability and pushing out supplies to hospitals faster.

"I think there's things that the President can use early on from the experience we had before, and take a look at it, and if he did I wasn't going to be out there saying he took my idea," Biden said. "It's a matter of the president doing what can most effectively get things done now."

Biden also told reporters that it's "for the Wisconsin courts and folks to decide" whether to continue with Tuesday's primary. But he indicated he didn't have a problem with the voting proceeding, even after he'd raised questions about the party's summer nominating convention in Milwaukee.

"A convention having tens of thousands of people in one arena is very different from having people walk into a voting booth one at a time and having machines rubbed down" with disinfectant after each use," Biden said, adding that voters have the option of mailing in their ballots.

The Democratic National Committee earlier Thursday announced it was pushing back its convention from the originally scheduled July 13-16 dates to unspecified dates the week of Aug. 17.