As former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned at The Loft On Jefferson Street Friday morning, he envisioned an America far different than President Donald Trump’s America.
The Democratic presidential candidate, who is slightly trailing front runner Bernie Sanders days before the Iowa caucus, spoke of what America would be like with him at the helm.
“In Joe Biden’s America, we choose science over fiction. We choose truth over lies,” he said, referring to President Trump.
That phrase – “In Joe Biden’s America” – became a common refrain throughout his speech.
“In Joe Biden’s America, no one, not even the president of the United States, is above the law,” Biden said in an elevated tone, just short of a shout.
The crowd inside The Loft erupted into cheers and applause.
Biden painted the president as frightened of him. So frightened, Biden said, that Trump has already paid for Iowa attack ads in advance of the caucus.
“He’s so concerned,” he said.
Biden couldn’t help unfurl some sharper barbs for President Trump, mocking his cozy relationships with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin.
“He (President Trump) sends what he says are love letters,” Biden said.
In Joe Biden’s America, he said, foreign dictators won’t claim an intimate friendship with the president of the United States.
“I don’t believe that we’re a nation that will bow down to Vladimir Putin,” he said, to more cheers from the crowd.
Biden is crisscrossing Iowa in advance of the Feb. 3 caucuses, as are all the candidates – save for senators stuck in Washington D.C. for President Trump’s impeachment trial. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders were forced to cancel campaign appearances Friday to attend the trial.
Biden, who no longer serves in the Senate, is free of such restrictions.
Earlier Friday morning, Biden sought to distinguish comments he made assailing partisanship during the 1999 impeachment of former President Bill Clinton earlier.
“It’s not a partisan impeachment,” Biden said on ABC’s Good Morning America program Friday. “He violated the Constitution, period.”
Biden said his comments in 1999 against party-line votes to remove a president were different because the Clinton case didn’t involve a constitutional violation.
“A party-line vote on something that doesn’t relate to a constitutional violation is a different thing,” Biden said.
Biden said a vote against impeaching Trump reflects poorly on “those who know, in fact, in their heart and head that, in fact, it’s a violation of the Constitution to do what he did.”
Though much of his stump speech in Burlington was about Trump, Biden also brought up climate change as pressing issues facing not just the country, but the world.
“In Joe Biden’s America, we believe in science, not fiction,” he said.