Former Vice President Joe Biden appeared on ABC on Thursday night for a rambling town hall, in lieu of a debate, opposite a town hall for President Donald Trump on NBC at the same time.
Aside from many factually-challenged statements, Biden said a number of truly outlandish things.
8-year-olds should be allowed to decide they are transgender. Biden: “The idea that an 8-year-old child, a 10-year-old child, decides, you know, I want to be transgender, that’s what I think I’d like to be, it’d make my life a lot easier — there should be zero discrimination.” (What happens when the 8-year-olds hit puberty?)
Police should shoot criminals in the leg. Biden: “You can ban choke holds, but beyond that, you have to teach people how to de-escalate circumstances. De-escalate. So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.” (Are police shooting “anybody”? Shooting unarmed people, even criminals, is usually a crime.)
Gather all of the governors “in a room.” Biden: “You can go to every governor and get them all in a room, all 50 of them as president and say, ‘Ask people to wear the mask. Everybody knows.'” (What about social distancing?)
Trump “didn’t do anything” to help the economy during coronavirus. Biden: “When the first round of money for unemployment, enhanced unemployment went by, he didn’t do anything.” (Trump signed the largest economic stimulus in American history, and extended that with the Paycheck Protection Program, as well as an executive order on expanded unemployment benefits.)
Hire workers in fracking industry to cap wells “and get a good salary doing it.” Biden: “[T]here are well over 100,000 wells that are left uncapped in the region. We could hire 128,000 of these people who are working in the industry to cap these wells and get a good salary doing it now. (Less than one well each. What do they do when they’re done?)
Trump could have kept schools and businesses open during the pandemic. Biden: “The president had an opportunity to open and allow schools and businesses to stay open if they got the kind of help they needed.” (Didn’t he say Trump should have shut everything down sooner?)
Trump “actually” said you should “inject bleach in your arm.” Biden: “Inject bleach in your arm, and that’s going to work. I’m not being facetious, he’s actually said these things.” (No, actually, he did not.)
Raise taxes to invest in “green infrastructure.” Biden: “We’re going to invest a great deal of that money into infrastructure, and to a green infrastructure.” (Remember what happened last time he tried?)
America has 20% of the world’s coronavirus deaths. Biden: “W make up 4% of the world’s population. We have 20% of the world’s deaths.” (That presumes China and other “developing” countries are providing accurate figures — a big presumption.)
Biden admitted his own crime bill was a mistake — but not at the federal level. Biden: “Yes, it was. But here’s where the mistake. The mistake came in terms of what the states did locally.”
Solar and wind power will save Pennsylvania. Biden: “And what we have to do is focus on the transmission of energy across the country from areas relating to solar and wind. The reason is that they have not, that has not been mastered yet.” (California has trouble keeping the lights on.)
Give all first-time home buyers $15,000. Biden: “We’re going to guarantee first-time home buyers a $15,000 down payment.” (There are about 2 million first-time home buyers per year, a cost of $30 billion annually)
Judge Amy Coney Barrett doesn’t have a judicial philosophy. Biden: “I don’t even think she has laid out much of a judicial philosophy in terms of the basis upon which she thinks.” (It was literally the first set of questions in her confirmation hearing.)
Packing the Court might be OK. “Depending on how they handle this.” (Biden said he was open to the idea of expanding the Supreme Court and packing it with liberal justices if the Senate confirms Barrett.)
The Boilermakers Union endorsed him in Pennsylvania. (It endorsed Trump.)
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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