Former President Barack Obama met his former Vice President Joe Biden in a new campaign video for Biden’s 2020 presidential bid. In two clips sparking the full video, which comes out Thursday, the couple appear to criticize President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Politicians posted the initial teaser video on Twitter on Wednesday, and Obama wrote: “There is nothing better than sitting down to talk to my friend Joe.”
The video begins with Biden and Obama getting out of separate cars, both wearing masks as a voiceover from their conversations.
“Can you imagine standing up when you’re president and saying, ‘It’s not my responsibility. I’m not taking responsibility,'” says Biden. “I mean literally. Literally.”
Obama responds: “Those words did not come out of our mouths while we were in office.”
Politicians seem to be referring to Mr. Trump’s comments in March, when he said he was not responsible for the lack of coronavirus testing at the time, as hospitals and health workers reported a shortage of testing.
“No, I am not responsible at all,” Trump said of the delay in testing in the United States at the time.
Trump has been widely criticized by his opponents for not doing more to combat the spread of COVID-19 when the pandemic was still in its early stages and for undermining the medical experts of his administration.
Until recently, the President largely resisted with a face covered in public and downplayed its importance in halting the spread of the virus. He has often praised States and governors that have reopened their economies more quickly, many of which are now experiencing an increase in cases.
The video continues, showing Biden and Mr. Obama traveling in separate elevators and greeting each other from a distance. Eventually it shows the two men sitting wide apart as they speak to maintain social distance.
In the video, Biden laments that he doesn’t understand “Trump’s inability to get an idea of what people are going through,” adding that the president “simply cannot relate in any way.”
Mr. Obama responds, “One of the things I’ve always known about you, Joe, is the reason I wanted you to be my Vice President and the reason you were so effective, it all starts with the ability to relate.” “
“If you can sit down with a family and see your own family in them and the struggles that you’ve been through or that your parents or your children went through, if you can connect those struggles with someone else’s struggles, then you go to work tough for them, “Obama continued. “And that’s always what motivated you to enter the public service.”
Biden tweeted that the “full conversation” will be live on Thursday at 10 am ET. The tweet also included another clip from the conversation.
In the second video, Biden says he believes Americans are now realizing that Trump “deliberately fled, dividing people.” Obama says he believes Biden “will be able to reassemble the kind of government that cares about people and unites them.”
Obama gave his long-awaited endorsement to Biden in April and he appeared on his first joint fundraiser with his former vice president in June. The virtual event raised a record $ 7.6 million, according to The Associated Press.
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