Joe Biden continued to tear into President Trump at a Tuesday fundraiser in Aspen, Colorado, accusing him of fomenting a culture of hate.
“I never had the expectation that President Trump would be a good president, but I had no idea that he would be as banal, mean and as bad as he is,” Biden, 76, said during a 26-minute speech at the dinner, where donors paid between $1,000 and $2,800 to attend, according to pool reports.
“It’s about hate, hate, hate,” Biden continued. “We have to rip it out. We have to rip it up. Because if we don’t, it will fundamentally change who we are. Who we are. The president is the face of America. Our children are listening. They know, they know it’s happening. He’s changing the whole dynamic about us, at home and abroad.”
“I never thought I’d say this about a president, but he’s fomenting hatred, and he’s dividing us based on ethnicity, religion, color, background,” he warned. “We can’t sustain ourselves that way. You can’t define what freedom in America is, based on any of those criteria.”
Biden went on to lament that the “social fabric in this country is being ripped apart,” and asserted that eight years of a Trump presidency “will fundamentally change who we are.” He also criticized Trump’s relationships with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The 2020 Democratic front-runner also touched on the effects of technology on the middle class, saying, “Those people are scared. We’ve got to speak to them. We’ve got to let them know there are answers without having to punish anybody.”
The fundraiser came days after two mass shootings over the weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, left at least 31 dead. The former vice president has accused the president of creating a “divisive” environment in the wake of the shootings.
