Joe Biden sat down with CBS ‘Evening News’ anchor Norah O’Donnell and divulged some details about his Monday meeting with the family of George Floyd, the Minneapolis black man who was killed on Memorial Day by a white police officer.
‘They’re an incredible family, his little daughter was there, the one who said “daddy’s going to change the world,” and I think her daddy is going to change the world,’ the presumptive Democratic nominee told O’Donnell. ‘I think what happened here is one of the great inflection points in American history, for real, in terms of civil liberties, civil rights and just treating people with dignity.’
The former vice president and his wife Jill traveled to Houston Monday, where Floyd’s final funeral will take place Tuesday, and met with Floyd’s six-year-old daughter Gianna, her mother Roxie Washington and his uncle Roger.
Joe Biden sat down with CBS ‘Evening News’ anchor Norah O’Donnell and spoke to her about his day meeting with family members of George Floyd
Joe Biden met with the family of George Floyd in Houston on Monday: From left: Congressman Cedric Richmond, Rev. Al Sharpton, Joe Biden, Attorney Ben Crump and Roger Floyd, George Floyd’s uncle
Joe Biden (center left) met with George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter Gianna (center right) and her mother Roxie Washington (left). He expressed his sympathies to Gianna and ‘promised to push for changes in policing,’ according to Washington’s attorney Chris Stewart (right)
Norah O’Donnell (left), the anchor of CBS ‘Evening News,’ had a socially distant sit-down with former Vice President Joe Biden (right) during his trip to Houston Monday, where he met with family members of the late George Floyd
Biden was accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana Democrat, and family lawyers Ben Crump and Chris Stewart, according to pictures shared on social media.
Biden didn’t allow reporters into his meetings with Floyd’s family members.
And because of his Secret Service protection, he decided to visit with them Monday instead of staying for the Tuesday funeral.
He’ll deliver a message to attendees via video instead.
‘Jill and I talked to them about – it’s hard enough to grieve, but it’s much harder to do it in public, it’s much harder with the whole world watching,’ Biden said.
Biden has lost three members of his family while in the public spotlight.
After being first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, Biden’s first wife Neilia and baby daughter Naomi Biden were killed in a car accident.
Then in 2015, tragedy struck again when Biden’s oldest son Beau, who had been Delaware’s attorney general, died of brain cancer.
The five year anniversary of son Beau Biden’s death was five days after Floyd was killed by officer Derek Chauvin on Memorial Day.
Biden, a moderate Democrat, who won the nomination over progressives Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, pushed back on the idea being floated on the left to ‘defund the police.’
The movement calls for funds to be removed from police departments and transferred to social services instead. Some within the movement believe police departments should be dissolved altogether.
‘No, I don’t support defunding the police,’ Biden told O’Donnell during their Monday sit-down. ‘I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet basic standards of decency and honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstration they can protect the community and everybody in the community.’
Earlier Monday, President Trump’s campaign had tried to chain Biden to the ‘defund the police’ movement, with campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh calling the former vice president ‘complicit’ for not quickly disavowing it.
‘As the protesters like to say, silence is agreement. By his silence, Joe Biden is endorsing defunding the police,’ Murtaugh said.
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates shot back saying, ‘As his criminal justice proposal made clear months ago, Vice President Biden does not believe that police should be defunded.’
‘He hears and shares the deep grief and frustration of those calling out for change, and is driven to ensure that justice is done and that we put a stop to this terrible pain,’ Bates said.