Thursday on PBS’s “NewsHour,” former Vice President Joe Biden said the “dysfunction” and “crassness” of President Donald Trump’s “unpresidential” nature was “dangerous internationally.”
Biden said, “David Brooks writes about this invisible moral fabric that holds up society and requires decent citizens to make it work and function notwithstanding what the Constitution says is needed for buoyancy. The dysfunction of this government, the crassness, the way in which public discourse takes place, the diminishing and relentless attacks on the only two groups wearing striped shirts, the referees, you the press and the courts, is demoralizing. The best example of that is Charlottesville.”
He continued, “I couldn’t remain silent because the idea of a president of the United States equating guys coming out of fields with torches carrying swastikas, using the same anti-Semitic bile, the same bile that was used in the streets of Nazi Germany and then comparing them, saying they’re equal responsibility with those who are protesting, you know, it does more than dumb down the system. It erodes those invisible elements of citizenship that are the buoyancy for what makes this nation so special.”
He added, “So it’s really different. It’s less his policies than the way he conducts — how unpresidential he is. By the way, it’s dangerous internationally because it’s not being presidential formal, it’s being presidential under certain minimal requirements, the rest of the world looks to a consistency. We went from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, ideologically gigantic change, but there was a continuity in the way the rest of the world looked at us. They are not at all certain of who we are right now.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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