2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden offered a harsh review of the Senate after the first day of President Trump’s impeachment trial.
“I was embarrassed for the institution,” Joe Biden told MSNBC Wednesday after seeing clips while in Iowa. “I was there a long time, Joe, and I never saw anything like that,” he added to host Joe Scarborough.
The former vice president and 36-year Delaware senator, 77, particularly targeted Trump’s lawyers and Senate Republicans, who stridently defended the president.
“I think it’s one of those things they’re going to regret when their grandchildren read in the history books about what they did,” he said.
The Senate passed a resolution in the early hours of Wednesday morning that laid the ground rules for Trump’s trial, excluding the immediate consideration of new witnesses or evidence.
Joe Biden was also pressed on his spat with Bernie Sanders over Social Security, insisting he wouldn’t make cuts to the program despite not supporting expanding entitlements in the past.
The Vermont senator and his campaign have been attacking Joe Biden on his Social Security record, releasing a conveniently clipped video of him “lauding” then-House Speaker Paul Ryan’s position. The full video shows that Joe Biden was mocking the speaker.
The two-term vice president was adamant that his past statements had been misconstrued.
“It’s like my pointing out Bernie voting against the Brady Bill five times,” he swiped, referring to gun law reforms he pushed for as a senator. “I mean, he’s made up for that. He’s indicated that’s in the past.”
When asked to reflect on the influence of his late son Beau Biden, who was 46 when he died in 2015 of brain cancer, former President Barack Obama’s No. 2 shared that his eldest child still “walks” with him on the campaign trail, two weeks out from Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Trump allegedly pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on the business dealings of Joe Biden’s surviving son, Hunter Biden, 50, launched the House impeachment investigation into the president, resulting in two articles of impeachment now being weighed by the Senate.
“Beau should be the one running for president, not me,” Joe Biden said of his late son, who was Delaware attorney general.
