DES MOINES, Iowa — After a day spent ignoring reporter questions about President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, Joe Biden is expected to rip him as a self-interested liar.
“The American people are a good and decent people,” Biden will say in Waukee, Iowa, on Thursday morning, according to his prepared remarks.
The former vice president, 77, will add, “They deserve a president who tells them the truth — not lie after lie after lie. They deserve a president who will put the country’s interest first — not his own self-interest. They deserve a president who appeals to the best in us — not the worst. They deserve a president who will bring us together — not pull us apart.”
Biden’s speech has been billed as both a counterattack to Republican hits on the Obama administration alumni and his “surviving” son Hunter Biden, 49, over their dealings in Ukraine as it relates to Trump’s impeachment, as well as his closing pitch to Iowa Democrats ahead of Monday’s opening primary contest for the 2020 presidential nomination.
Biden, a Delaware senator for 36 years before two terms as President Barack Obama’s vice president, saw his link to Trump’s impeachment reinforced Wednesday morning. Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin told MSNBC the younger Biden was a “relevant witness” to the trial given his lucrative role with a Ukrainian natural gas company that the president wanted investigated.
On the campaign trail, Biden has upped his rebuke of GOP “smears” against him and his family, including by Republican Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Rick Scott of Florida. Ernst this week implied Trump’s impeachment would dampen his chances in the caucuses, while Scott bought airtime in the first-in-the-nation state to slam him. The former vice president has also upped his condemnation of the man he’s hoping to replace in the White House.
In response to a woman during a town hall late Wednesday in Council Bluffs urging him not to let Trump bully him in a hypothetical general election, he said, “Bullies are cowards.” Biden told her he would confront the president, but he was “going to try not to lose my Irish temper and get down in the mosh pit with him.”
Biden reiterated that message in an opinion piece published in local Iowa newspapers on Wednesday.
“It’s no understatement to say that Donald Trump represents an existential threat to the future of our country,” Biden wrote. “He has demonstrated over and over again that he has little understanding of — and zero regard for — our laws, our values, or our democracy. Instead of having dignity and respect for others, he insults and demeans. He has no moral rudder. In short, he is everything we aspire not to be as Americans and as people.”
Biden is currently an average of 3 percentage points behind fellow front-runner Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to win Iowa’s kickoff caucuses, according to RealClearPolitics data.
