Former Vice President Joe Biden recently told a group of donors that both he and former President Barack Obama “knew” that President Trump didn’t think he was going to win the 2016 election.
“Barack and I decided we were going to give him plenty of chance to set up his government, not be critical the first year of him running because we knew, and I’m not being a wise guy, he didn’t think he was going to win,” Biden told the group of roughly 100 donors at the posh Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday night. “He wasn’t prepared for that, he didn’t even have a team put together, we wanted to give him time, for real, we didn’t have high expectations but we wanted to give him time. The fact of the matter is that I couldn’t remain silent when I saw what happened in Charlottesville.”
Biden first spoke out against Trump in an August essay published by the Atlantic where he proclaimed that “we are living through a battle for the soul of this nation.”
“You, me, and the citizens of this country carry a special burden in 2017. We have to do what our president has not. We have to uphold America’s values. We have to do what he will not,” Biden wrote after criticizing Trump’s response to the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville. “We have to defend our Constitution. We have to remember our kids are watching. We have to show the world America is still a beacon of light.”
