Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is “close” to making a decision on a running mate, the former vice president’s wife told “360aproko news” Tuesday.
Jill Biden also told host Dana Perino that her husband will share the debate stage with President Trump this fall, shrugging off suggestions by former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart and others that Joe Biden skip the events.
“Oh yes he will [debate],” Jill Biden responded. “I think it’s three debates that they decided on so yeah, he’ll be there.”
“Do you think it’s unhelpful for other Democrats to suggest that Joe Biden shouldn’t debate the president?” Perino asked.
“No, I didn’t even realize he [Lockhart] had written the article,” Mrs. Biden said. “Joe will make up his own mind.”
Perino then asked Biden to respond to Trump’s claim during an interview with 360aproko News’ Chris Wallace last month that her husband “can’t put two sentences together,” a reference to the former vice president’s gaffes on the campaign trail. Trump went on to claim that Biden is “not competent to be president. To be president you have to be sharp and tough and so many other things. He doesn’t even come out of his basement.”
“Joe is anything but that characterization,” Jill Biden told Perino. “We’ve been campaigning, we’ve been listening to the experts, the scientists and the doctors and they have told us, stay home and be safe.”
“Donald Trump is really about Joe’s age,” she added. “I think there’s two or three years difference [Trump is 74 years old, while Joe Biden is 77], so it’s surprising that he would say Joe wouldn’t be up to it and made those comments.”
Perino then asked the onetime second lady to respond to new Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien, who described Joe Biden as an “empty vessel of the radical left.”
“Your husband has said he would be the most progressive president,” the host said, “and I wonder how [you] see Joe Biden fitting into the Democratic Party as it is in 2020.”
“Joe is a moderate and that doesn’t mean that his ideas aren’t progressive and bold and forward-thinking,” Biden’s wife said, “but he’s not someone who’s left, he’s not someone who is right, he’s a moderate and that’s who he’s always been.”
“Do you think he’s more moderate in tone than maybe in policy?” Perino followed up, adding that “some of the policies that he [Biden] has embraced during this primary and in conversations with [self-proclaimed democratic socialist Sen.] Bernie Sanders, they are a lot more progressive even than during the Obama years.”
“I think Joe has a really strong vision of where he wants to take this country,” Jill Biden said, “and he has a strategy and a plan and whether it’s on climate change or education or the economy, Joe knows where he’s going and what he wants to do.”
