DES MOINES, Iowa — Former Vice President Joe Biden assailed President Trump over his response to the August 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia episode in which a white supremacist driver rammed his car through a group of protesters, killing a 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer.
Appearing at the Iowa State Fair Thursday, as the initial speaker among 2020 Democrats participating over the next five days in the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox, Biden seized on Trump’s “very fine people” remark two years ago he said equated neo-Nazi activists with anti-racist protestors.
“No president, sitting president has ever said something like that,” Biden said. “And the only thing that’s happened is it’s gotten worse.”
The remarks followed the former vice president’s speech in Burlington, Iowa on Wednesday where he said President Trump was “fueling carnage” but denied his own remarks were polarizing.
Biden Thursday at the state fair went on to talk about his middle-class upbringing, saying that Wall Street “didn’t build this country,” and that the “middle class made it possible.”
The former vice president criticized the economy under Trump.
“The middle class is no longer the wealthiest middle class in the world,” he said. “We’re in a situation where you have a significant portion, over 50% of them, saying that their children will never have a life.”
[Also read: Joe Biden scolds Breitbart reporter who accused him of misquoting Trump’s Charlottesville reaction]
