Former Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed on the Iowa debate stage Tuesday that he’s taken the most heat from President Trump and the Republicans of the 2020 hopefuls – and his poll numbers are only going up.
‘I have been the object of his affection now more than anybody else on this stage,’ Biden said at the CNN debate in Des Moines. ‘I’ve taken all the hits he can deliver and I’m getting better,’ he added, pointing to his strong showing in recent polls.
Biden was also asked if it was going to be difficult to run against Trump, who could see the Senate vindicate him in an impeachment trial – due to start next week – where the ex-veep and his son were central characters in the president’s alleged plot.
The 2020 hopeful said it was ‘irrelevant’ and said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was right to act, as Trump had ‘in fact, committed impeachable offenses.’
‘This Republican Party, they’ve gone after – savaged my surviving son, gone after me, told lies that your networks and others won’t even carry on television because they’re flat-out lies,’ Biden said. ‘And I did my job, the question is whether he did his job. And he hasn’t done his job.’
Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed that he’s taken the most heat from President Trump and the Republicans – and his poll numbers are only going up
Joe Biden reminded the debate audience that President Trump (pictured) and Republicans had ‘savaged’ his surviving son, who’s become a central character in the president’s impeachment
Former Vice President Joe Biden (center), standing alongside Sens. Elizabeth Warren (left) and Bernie Sanders (right), pointed out that he’s been the object of Trump’s affection – and has still remained a viable Democratic frontrunner
The House of Representatives impeached Trump last month over a scheme to hold up $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country’s president to announce he was investigating Joe and Hunter Biden.
Biden has been a consistent frontrunner in the 2020 campaign – though Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg have sporadically leapfrogged him in polls.
Trump also pressured the Ukrainian leader to look into the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation.
Hunter Biden, whose older brother Beau died of brain cancer in May 2015, had served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which Trump and his allies have tried to characterize as corrupt.
That corruption carried over to Joe Biden, Trump has suggested, because Hunter only got the gig because of nepotism.
Biden said at the debate that it ‘doesn’t matter whether he’s gone after me.’
‘I have to be in a position that I think of the American people,’ he said. ‘I can’t hold a grudge.’
Biden said the job of the next president of the United States would be to ‘not only fight, but heal.’
But he pointed out that by him winning he could also splinter the nation a greater deal.
‘Notwithstanding that there’s going to be more division when he’s defeated by me next time,’ Biden said.
Biden argued throughout the debate that he would make it out of the Democratic primary race because he had the broadest coalition.
‘And by the way, I have overwhelming support from the African-American community, overwhelming. More than everybody else, number one,’ Biden said. ‘Number two, working class people, where I come from in Pennsylvania, and places I come from in Delaware, have great support.’
‘I have support across the board,’ Biden said.
Biden said he was especially keen to fight Trump on an economic message.
‘And I’m not worried about taking on Donald Trump at all,’ he added.
Biden continues to hold an eight-point lead in national polling, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average. The most recent Iowa poll, from Monmouth, has Biden up by six points. Though another recent poll, from the Des Moines Register, had Sanders up by three.