Biden, Obama rip Trump in socially distanced campaign video
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is once again pulling out the big guns to get his message across — this time filming a slick sit-down conversation with old boss and “best friend” Barack Obama as he continues to shun questions from reporters.
In a preview released Wednesday ahead of the conversation’s full release on Thursday, the two men can be seen gabbing and pontificating from leather armchairs about President Trump’s lack of empathy.
“Can you imagine standing up when you were president and saying, ‘It’s not my responsibility. I take no responsibility’? I mean, literally, literally,” Biden said to Obama as the pair sit six feet apart.
“Those words didn’t come out of our mouths when we were in office,” Obama, 58, responded.
“I don’t understand his inability to get a sense of what people are going through. He just can’t relate in any way,” Biden, 77, continued.
Described as a “wide-ranging conversation about the biggest challenges facing Americans across the country,” Biden’s campaign said the chat will draw “sharp contrast” between how the Obama-Biden administration pulled the US out of a recession and Trump’s “historic failure” to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the video is also clearly intended to add Obama’s star wattage to Biden’s stagnant campaign, with the former colleagues seen joking about old times as Biden holds up an old photograph of them high-fiving.
Obama, who reluctantly entered the fray several months ago to endorse Biden after years keeping a low profile, also gave another weighty stamp of approval to his loyal veep in the video.
“One of the things I have always known about you, Joe, it’s the reason I wanted you to be my vice president, and the reason why you were so effective — it all starts with being able to relate,” he said.
“If you could sit down with a family and see your own family in them and the struggles that you’ve gone through, or that your parents went through, or your kids are going through — if you can connect those struggles to somebody else’s struggles, then you’re going to work hard for them and that’s always what’s motivated you to get into public service,” he continued.
As the pandemic continues to rage and infections spike across the nation, Biden has been largely sidelined to his Delaware basement, from which he regularly appears via video link.
The septuagenarian presidential hopeful has laid out his plans for the economy in a series of events where he dodges questions from reporters.