Joe Biden, strapped for a week of attacks on the Republican National Convention, exemplified his reaction Sunday by laughing at questions about his mental acuity, denying that he had supported the thinning of the police, and jumping around his running mate, Kamala Harris, to defend against the attacks of President Trump.
In the first joint television interview of the Biden-Harris ticket, since she was formally nominated at her party’s convention last week, Biden said that Harris’ selection was not a response to pressure to choose a Black woman as his Vice Presidential nominee.
“I did not feel pressured to select a Black woman,” he said in an interview with ABC, according to video clips released prior to his broadcast in full at 5 p.m. PDT. But he added: “The government should look like the people, look like the country.”
Asked to respond to Trump’s attacks on her as “mean,” “nasty,” and “unfair,” Harris laughed, dismissing the insults as a deviant tactic.
“I think there’s so much about what’s coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth that is designed to lead the American people out of what he does every day,” she said. “This is about neglect, negligence and harm to the American people.”
Biden jumped in to add that Trump was incompetent and that his attacks were out of bounds and unprecedented.
“The idea that he would say something like that, no president – no president – has ever said such a thing,” Biden said. “No president has ever used those words.”
The interview gives voters the first unscripted, expanded look at the dynamics between the running mates, a historic pairing between a 77-year-old white man who, if he wins the presidency, would be the oldest person to do so. t take office, and a 55-year-old who is the first Black woman and the first Asian American on a national party card. Biden and Harris made joint appearances of the campaign, and they sat down last week for a joint interview with People magazine. But ABC was allowed the first broadcast interview, which was conducted by David Muir and Robin Roberts.
Despite their differences of background and generation and their sometimes bitter competition in the presidency in 2020, Biden and Harris have a relationship of some warmth and affection, because Harris, although serving as attorney general of California, had been close to Biden’s late son, Beau, then the attorney general of Delaware, who died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.
In the interview, sitting at a great distance from Harris and the interviewers, in accordance with health protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden said choosing Harris as his running mate “was an easy decision to make.”
“I can not understand and fully appreciate what it means to walk in her shoes,” he said. “What we do know is that we have set the same value.”
It remains to be seen in the coming weeks exactly what role Harris will play in the campaign. For now, both nominees are sticking to virtual campaign and lying low, while the spotlight is on Trump and his party during this week’s GOP convention. The ABC interview gives Biden and Harris a chance to answer some of the criticisms that Republicans are expected to highlight.
When asked about Trump’s questions about his mental acuity, Biden laughed and welcomed the comparison to Trump’s fitness.
“Watch out,” he said. “Mr. President, look at me. Look at both of us, what we say, what we do, what we master, what we know, what kind of form we are. ‘
Trump called his own mental acuity by saying he ‘aced’ a cognitive test, although the test questions are mostly rudimentary. Biden has approached Trump’s suggestions that he should undergo such tests.
When Biden was asked about statements made by the former vice president that he was a transitional figure in the Democratic Party, he refused, which meant he intended to become one president. He said he would “absolutely” consider serving two terms.
A central line of attack of GOP is that Biden is not the political mother he claims to be; Republicans sometimes portray him as a Trojan horse for the far left wing of the party. In the interview, Biden denied – as he has on many occasions – that he supported defending the police, which is a rallying cry from many Black Lives Matter activists and other progressives who believe public funds should be shifted from armed law enforcement to social services. Biden’s criminal justice plan actually calls for increased funding for community policing.
“I do not want to defend the police departments,” he said. ‘I think they need more help; they need more assistance. ”
Many in the Democratic convention have criticized Trump’s treatment of the coronavirus crisis, which has killed more than 176,000 people in the U.S. and led to economic disaster. Trump warned for months that the outbreak would “eventually disappear” and urged administrators to lift stay-at-home restrictions. In the ABC interview, Biden said he would take far stricter actions – even imposing imposing severe quarantine restrictions on the country – to curb the spread of the virus as scientists said it was necessary.
“I will be willing to do whatever it takes to save lives because we can not move the country until we control the virus,” Biden said. “That is the fundamental mistake of thinking of this administration to begin with. To keep the country running and moving and to grow the economy, and to engage people, you have to repair the virus, you have to deal with the virus. ”
And when scientists said it was necessary to shut down the land to do so, Biden said, ‘I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists. ”
