SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Joe Biden shrugged off Republican attacks on him days out from Iowa’s opening Democratic caucuses, saying they indicated who the GOP was most afraid of facing in the general election.
“A senator from Florida sitting in Washington has decided to start running negative ads against Joe Biden just days before the Iowa caucuses. What do you think that’s about?” Biden, 77, said in Sioux City.
Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott paid for Iowa TV spots ripping the former vice president, even though the senator is not running for office in the state and is not up for reelection until 2024. Biden’s campaign has already sent a fundraising blast, describing the ads as “vicious lies and debunked conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump.”
Biden on Wednesday also slammed Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst for linking President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate to the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
“By the way, did anyone see what Joni Ernst said the other day? She spilled the beans, didn’t she? Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy, lordy,” he said.
While the 36-year Delaware senator categorized Republican salvos lobbed at him and his family as “smears,” he said if elected to the White House, he wouldn’t “hold grudges.”
Yet his appeal to remain above the political fray didn’t stop him from calling Trump’s understating of the injuries suffered by U.S. troops hurt in Iraq after the Iranian missile attack as disgraceful.
“If anybody’s headache, he’s a headache,” Biden said. “It makes me angry when I think about it.”
