Vice President Joe Biden said he is dismayed, after spending so much of his career trying to change the public’s attitude toward rape and sexual assault, that someone with as questionable a record on the subject as Donald Trump could succeed President Obama in the White House.
Biden said he found it “astonishing” that Trump would describe the 2005 video of him making lewd remarks about a woman as just locker room talk. Trump admitted to “textbook sexual assault,” which is “absolutely outrageous,” Biden told Seth Meyers during a Wednesday taping of “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” at Washington’s Warner Theater, which airs 12:35 a.m. Thursday.
Biden worked so hard “trying to figure out how to change the culture in this country so that we treat women with respect and dignity,” he said, referencing the Violence Against Women Act and his initiative to combat sexual assault on college campuses.
Biden’s influence was his late father, who told him: “The cardinal sin of all is a man raising a hand against a woman. That is the ultimate abuse of power.”
Discussing the vice presidential debate, Biden said he is astounded that Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, are so out of sync on the issues. Trump said he disagreed with Pence’s approach to Syria.
“You watch it, and you’re like, ‘It can’t be happening,'” Biden said, according to an embargoed transcript of the show. “It’s a frightening notion that the vice president and the president don’t understand each other’s” positions.
Biden, who grew up in Scranton, Pa., also said the Republican nominee has no clue what blue-collar families experience.
“He doesn’t have the slightest notion of what it means to be a blue-collar guy,” Biden said. “Here’s the one I love the best: ‘Workers make too much money,'” Biden said, quoting Trump.
