Transcript for Joe Biden pressed on restoring bipartisanship
Republican, Andrew Lewis. I guess a disaffected Republican, you wrote in John Kasich — And John’s writing in for me, by the way. I shouldn’t tease, I’m sorry. My father served as secretary of transportation under Ronald Reagan. Oh, yeah. And some of his closest allies were senator Ted Kennedy. Sadly, today, we have highly partisan and dysfunctional governance and I believe president trump is primarily responsible for creating this toxic environment. As president, how will you avoid the temptation to exact revenge and instead take the high rode road and attempt to restore bipartisan ship, civility and honor to your democracy? As written by a fella who won the pulitzer prize for a book her wrote about the presidency, he said, you know, I doubt whether Biden is really Irish. He doesn’t hold a grudge. In politics, grudges don’t work. They make no sense. I really mean it. I have never — and the second point I’d make is, everybody talks about, yeah, Joe, when you were a senator and a chairman of foreign relations or chairman of the judiciary, you got a lot of things done, able to cross the aisle, but the days are changed. When you were vice president, you got a lot of thins done, I can’t happen anymore. It can. It starts off by the way your father was and tip was and others. You don’t question another man or woman’s motive. You can question their judgment but not their motive. We badly needed infrastructure bill. What happened? I stand up and I say, you know, we need infrastructure bill, senator, but I tell you what, you’re in the pocket of the cement industry. But let’s see what we can do. You can’t get anywhere. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. I learned that lesson a long time ago. I have never — when it’s obvious on its face what the motive is, stick to the subject. And listen to the other guy. Listen. What I will be doing, if I’m elected president, the first thing — not a joke, and you can ask, they tell you, your dads old friends on the Republican side, I’m going to call them, say, let’s get toeg. We have to figure out how we’re going to move forward here. There are so many things we really do agree on. And with trump out of the way, the vindictiveness of a president going after Republicans who don’t do exactly what he says, gets taken away. There’s going to be, I promise you, between four and eight Republican senators are willing — are going to be willing to move on things where there’s bipartisan consensus. Last example I’ll give you. You know, after we — after trump had been elected, named the next president, wasn’t sworn in yet, I had been working on a thing called the — a bill relating to cancer cures, okay? And it was called the cancer moonshot. And I worked with a number of Democrats and Republicans and we had a bill that was about $9 billion that made significant increases in research and development on canceral tern tichs, nih, in particular, cancer — specific cancer initiatives and we only had, at the time, I think it was 111 or 114, whatever it was, votes in the house, I don’t know the exact number, and we had fewer than 40 in the senate. But after he was elected, I got those people together as vice president and we sat down and we worked it out and we ended up getting it passed, 396 votes in the house and 94 votes in the senate. At the end of the day, because I had to do with Biden cancer moonshot I had been working on, Mitch Mcconnell, Mitch Mcconnell stood up, I was presiding officer, and moved to name the bill after my deceased son beau, who had just died. So, there is — there are ways to bring this together. How about the question of political accountability and is there some tension between that and bringing people together? You know, Robert Mueller laid out a lot of the evidence of possible obstruction of justice by president trump. What would a Biden justice department do with that evidence? What the Biden justice department will do is let the department of justice be the department of justice. Let them make the judgments of who should be prosecuted. They are not my lawyers. They’re not my personal lawyers. You’re not going to rule it in or rule it out. I’m not going to rule it in or out. I’m going to hire first-rate prosecutors and people that understand the law, Democrat and Republican administrations have had, and let them make the judgment. But turning this into a vehicle for, as if it’s your own law firm, you don’t own that justice department. You pick the best people you can and you hope what they’re going to do is, they’re going to enforce the law as they see it. But can you remember any Republican president going out there, former democratic president, go find that guy and prosecute him? You ever heard of that? Or, by the way, I’m being sued because a woman is accusing me of rape, represent me. Represent me. Personally represent me in the state of New York on my — not allowing my tax returns. What’s that all about? What is that about?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
