Vice President Joe Biden joined MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” today for a live, wide-ranging interview in Philadelphia. He told co-hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist that the “Democratic Party overall hasn't spoken enough” to white working-class voters.
On Donald Trump, Biden said: “I don't have anything personal against Donald Trump…
But the truth is, Donald Trump knows nothing about foreign policy… And nor should he, based upon his background.”
Video and rush transcript of Biden’s interview on “Morning Joe” are below. Mandatory credit: MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Video: http://on.msnbc.com/2aelfL2
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
BRZEZINSKI: Joining us now, the vice -- the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden.
(APPLAUSE)
JOE BIDEN: Well. It's amazing what happens when you announce you're not running for president.
SCARBOROUGH: There you go. All right.
AUDIENCE: Joe! Joe! Joe! Joe!
(APPLAUSE)
SCARBOROUGH: First of all, let me say to everybody, I'm very humbled. Thank you so much.
BRZEZINSKI: He says thank you. He says thank you, from the bottom of his heart.
SCARBOROUGH: Secondly, I've got to say, Mr. Vice President, we know you've never been in an Irish pub before. We thank you.
BRZEZINSKI: Right. This is what it's like.
SCARBOROUGH: We thank you for coming and making an exception for us here.
JOE BIDEN: All right (ph), Joe.
BRZEZINSKI: Welcome.
SCARBOROUGH: So -- so, welcome, and a great honor to have you here. Let's talk about what's happening, first of all, in politics.
I was talking to I Elijah Cummings a little bit earlier today. It seems that from the time you were in the Senate, even the time that you were sworn in, that things have gone off the rail. That Democrats are having a harder time talking to Republicans and vice versa.
What's happening? And -- and give us hope. Give voters hope out there.
BRZEZINSKI: If it's possible.
JOE BIDEN: First of all, Joe, I think what you state is accurate.
You know, that old bad joke, some of my best friends, well, you know, some of your -- when you were in Congress, some of your best friends were Democrats.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: And right now, you know, and for my last 40 years, I've always gotten on with Republicans. And we talked to each other.
Look, here's the best example I can give you. Mike, you remember there used to be a private Senate dining room, there was a Senate dining room where a senator could bring a guest in the Capitol. And then there was a little room with two big tables where senators, when they wanted to eat with one another, ate by themselves.
And when I first got to the Senate, Joe Ted Kennedy -- I didn't want to be there at the time.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: But Ted -- Ted Kennedy says, "You got to come, and here's what -- you want to learn. Come and sit at the table every -- from noon to 1:00, and just listen." Because all the senators got together, and they talked and they swapped stories.
SCARBOROUGH: And by the way, Republicans and Democrats alike. Didn't even think twice about it.
JOE BIDEN: Exactly, yes. Yes. No, no, no, no. And -- and everybody was together.
I went over, and I get up there a lot, and I decided I was going to go in and have lunch with a lot of my old buddies. I walk in, there's no tables anymore. They don't even have it any more. There's lounge chairs in there.
BRZEZINSKI: Wow.
JOE BIDEN: And it used to be that -- that we -- you know, when your gang came in, knew, you know, the big thing you all held up, and said, I have no passport, making sure you let everybody, know we don't travel.
You know, we're home. We don't go to those foreign countries. Well, what happened was, we used to travel together. And you'd -- and you'd go, like I was just down to Australia. I would ordinarily -- you would go down as a senator with another Republican, and sometimes their spouse.
And when you get to know somebody, and you know they've got a husband or wife that suffers from cancer, or a kid that has a drug problem, or whatever, it humanizes.
BRZEZINSKI: So true.
SCARBOROUGH: Another thing that happened. Like in 1994, and I think it really did break when Newt came in.
JOE BIDEN: I'm not blaming Newt, but...
SCARBOROUGH: No, no, no, no. But there was -- there was an immediate...
(LAUGHTER)
BRZEZINSKI: You can blame him.
SCARBOROUGH: No, no, no. Listen, he -- there was a change in culture, which was, you know, Newt told everybody, don't stay up here.
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: Vote for three days, go rush home, work the district, work the -- work your offices in the district.
And so, suddenly the kids weren't going to school with each other. The spouses weren't -- weren't spending time together. A lot of people weren't going out golfing, doing whatever they did. It's a lot harder to call somebody a Nazi or a Marxist if your kids are in the same class together.
JOE BIDEN: Exactly right. By the way, that's -- that's absolutely correct.
And so, what happens now is, most of those guys and women, they don't know one another. They can't -- I could tell you a lot about the families of the men -- look, now, Strom Thurman asked me to do -- on his death bed, asked me to do his eulogy.
I did Strom Thurman's eulogy.
BRZEZINSKI: Wow.
JOE BIDEN: And I ran in the Senate against everything Strom Thurman stood for. Jesse Helms, before I went -- went to his funeral. His wife, Dot, who just passed away, came out in this big Baptist church, we were there. And I -- only two Democrats, me and Chris Dodd.
She walked out, two daughters and his son he adopted, who was -- who was handicapped (ph), he was, in braces. And walked out and said, "We voted for you, Joe. We put your sign on our lawn."
SCARBOROUGH: Wow.
JOE BIDEN: I mean, it was -- and I -- I got more, not less progressive.
But you get to know somebody. And you listen to the other team. You listen to the other side. And -- and but that -- there's not much listening going on.
BRZEZINSKI: So, I'd like to ask you about the presidential race. You're one of the few...
JOE BIDEN: Oh there is one?
(LAUGHTER)
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. A little something going on here. You're one of the few foreign policy minds that my father has deep respect for.
JOE BIDEN: It's a high compliment.
BRZEZINSKI: And I'd like -- I'd like to ask you...
(APPLAUSE)
BRZEZINSKI: What -- and I -- I...
SCARBOROUGH: Other -- other than Willie and myself.
BRZEZINSKI: Well, Willie, yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: There's Willie, myself and you (inaudible).
BRZEZINSKI: I -- I mean this -- I really want to know. Is there anything that Donald Trump has said -- is there any context to his foreign policy comments that he has made throughout this election so far?
JOE BIDEN: Look, I don't have anything personal against Donald Trump.
BRZEZINSKI: No, I'm not asking...
JOE BIDEN: No, no. I want to put it in context. And so -- but the truth is, Donald Trump knows nothing about foreign policy. And -- and nor should he, based upon his background.
(APPLAUSE)
But the thing that bothers me, Willie (ph), is I don't see any attempt for him to go out and get people who really know on the Republican side to be aware of what is really -- the whole -- this whole thing about NATO.
Now, you know, everybody's making a big thing, and saying he's a friend of Putin's. I don't buy that. But here's what he's doing. He's playing directly into the hands of a guy who says -- and your father would tell you -- his overarching goal with Putin is to break up NATO and to fracture Europe, makes him stronger.
So here you've got someone coming along and saying, you know, unless Latvia pays their bills -- first of all, they're paying their bill. But unless Latvia pays the bill, I'm not sure we're going to honor Article 5 of a treaty that is the single, most significant treaty in the history of mankind, lasted over 60 years, is absolutely central to our security.
Now, I don't think he'd be -- I don't think if he knew it, I don't think he -- maybe it's not fair. I don't think he knows what Article 5 is, and nor does -- should anybody here know what Article 5 is.
But if you're going to be president of the United States of America, it says...
SCARBOROUGH: You better know.
JOE BIDEN: Hey, you better know. So I just think it's -- and some of the things he says, like for example, I know he's trying to be tough but he's going to go out and carpet bomb.
You want to make friends and influence people in the Middle East? So you're going to go carpet bomb innocent people and bad people at the same time, and that's going to help us fight against ISIS and Daesh?
I mean, the things he says are -- are -- are -- make absolutely no sense. But I think it is he's into -- well, I shouldn't guess his motive. But I -- it's just -- it worries me. And I promise you, Mike, every place I go -- I've now traveled over 1,200,000 miles. I've met every world leader in the last 35 years.
I don't think there's a single world leader I haven't met and got -- I mean, ended up close to a first name basis with them. OK? Every place I go, whether I'm reaching across the table and trying to solve a problem with Xi in -- the president of China, or I'm down in New Zealand with the prime minister.
And they go, tell me, this Trump's not going to -- I mean, that -- that can't happen, can it?
(LAUGHTER)
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: I'm not joking. Anyway.
BRZEZINSKI: Willie Geist.
GEIST: Part of the argument, Mr. Vice President, that the Trump campaign makes is that we now have a world spinning out of control. You heard it at their convention last week.
And Americans wake up and they see it on their TVs, whether it's in Munich the other day, whether it's in France with a priest yesterday, or Nice the week before that, or Brussels or in Orlando.
Does he have a point that because of some of the policies of the last eight years, Syria could've gone better, Libya could've gone better, Iraq could've gone better, not providing these safe havens for ISIS to grow and spread up into Europe?
JOE BIDEN: Well, the answer is no, Willie. And let me explain what I mean by that.
You know -- you remember when the Arab Spring hit, everybody was talking about, you know, what are we going to do, the Arab Spring, as if it was one -- one coherent, you know, rising up against authoritarian regimes.
And I kid the president, I said you know, his daughter and my daughter are best -- -- my -- my granddaughter are best friends. I mean the same little grade together, and they grew up (ph). And I said you know, when our kids are in some graduate school and graduate program, the question is, what'd they do about the Arab Spring?
The first is (inaudible) the book, it said what made them think they could do anything about the Arab Spring? There's major movements that occur in history where the shifts of power occur, having nothing to do with who's the leader at the moment.
And what happened is you saw the breakdown of a whole range of states, particularly in the Middle East, which is -- which is inevitable, going to happen...
SCARBOROUGH: But shouldn't we have gotten involved in Syria earlier?
JOE BIDEN: The -- the -- the answer is, and do what involved in Syria earlier? The question is whether or not we should have made a judgment as to drawing a red line with Assad or not, and how that was going to work.
But -- think about it, Joe. Every Republican you had on talked about how we should do more in Syria. How do they always start off? No ground troops. We're not going to commit any ground troops.
Name me one Republican who's said, let's put ground troops in Syria. Name me one. Number two, OK, no ground troops. Now, what are you going to do?
OK, you're going to go out and find the opposition, because we're always -- we're looking for the Thomas Jefferson hiding behind the sand dune. There's somebody...
SCARBOROUGH: But what -- what Republicans say, though...
(LAUGHTER)
We actually do have ground troops right now.
JOE BIDEN: No.
SCARBOROUGH: Over there fighting against ISIS?
JOE BIDEN: No, what we have is we have special operations forces.
SCARBOROUGH: But they're -- they're ground troops. We've got boots on the ground.
JOE BIDEN: No -- yeah, no. Well, let put it this way. We have boots on the ground, but we have boots on the ground not leading, but training the folks we've trained to be more effective and provide air cover for them as they move.
But everybody knew what we meant by ground troops. The lesson we learned from Iraq is you put 160,000 troops in the middle of a country that in fact has -- we -- you don't understand at all, you're in the middle of a civil war and you're going somehow solve that.
There's not a single Republican out there I know that says, you know, we should put in another 20,000, 30,000 troops. What we are doing, Joe, and we're -- its working, we're taking back -- we take back 50 percent of the caliphate fight so far.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: And the movement against these guys is real. There -- you know, think about where we were two years ago on this program. We were legitimately saying, "God, they've established the caliphate."
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: Unlike -- unlike Al Qaida, these guys are actually establishing an area they're going to control. And they're going to move from Raqqa, all the way down through Baghdad and Mecca and Medina. And they're going to have this -- this country in effect, they're are going to control (ph) a new caliphate.
SCARBOROUGH: So what do you say to critics who is say you go back six years, you go to 2010, where there actually was stability in Iraq, by -- certainly much more than there was a few years before?
What do you say to critics who say, when we all left, when everybody --- when everybody, all the American troops left, we created a void that allowed ISIS to grow and create that caliphate?
JOE BIDEN: I was either in the country -- I've been in, I think 26 times, well over 20 times into Iraq. And during this period as vice president and the year my son was there, I was there a lot.
I guess I've been in eight, 10, 12 times.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: I know the names of the grandchildren of the leaders, not a joke.
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: You don't have to name them all right here.
(LAUGHTER)
JOE BIDEN: No, no, but here's the...
SCARBOROUGH: I get your point.
JOE BIDEN: But here's the point. There wasn't one single, solitary leader, including the Barzani and the Kurds, who would vote in the core of their parliament to allow the Status of Forces Agreement, meaning that...
SCARBOROUGH: Not one?
JOE BIDEN: Not one, not one -- they all would tell me they would and I'd say go vote, go vote. Not one, because they were worried what would happen is it would be used against them politically, supporting the occupier.
(CROSSTALK)
JOE BIDEN: And by the way, I plead to keep 10,000 troops there.
SCARBOROUGH: I wonder, Mr. Vice President, if we're going to end up at a place you were in 2000 -- early 2003, when you said there's not one Iraq, there are three Iraqs.
Let's just stop with the fiction and give the Sunnis their country, give the Shia their country and give the Kurds their country.
JOE BIDEN: Precisely what I said was, their constitution calls for a federal system. And I said that the Kurds should have their own -- their own police force, like California has the highway patrol. The Sunnis should have theirs and so should the Shia.
Because the idea you're ever going to have a Sunni force in Shia territory is bizarre, number one.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: Number two, I said the central government should be weak, control the borders and allow local control of each of these areas.
So the way their constitution is written is you're able to go to the core and move to have semi-autonomy. It's a federal system. But now what's happened is, and from the very beginning and the last administration insisted, as well, there be a central government that controlled everything.
It's not possible. It will not happen in your lifetime or mine. And the way to bring stability is to make it clear to each of the major regions of Iraq that you can control your local schools, like you can in the United States.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: You control your local police force.
That's why I proposed...
(AUDIO GAP)
JOE BIDEN: ... Guard, the New Jersey National Guard to give people confidence they're not going to be victimized again...
SCARBOROUGH: So, Sunnis -- so, Sunnis aren't dependent completely on what happens from a Shia-controlled Baghdad government.
Mike?
BARNICLE: You know, Mr. Vice President, I'm looking at you, I obviously see the vice president of the United States. But I also...
SCARBOROUGH: You're very good at that stuff.
(LAUGHTER)
JOE BIDEN: I'm on my game.
SCARBOROUGH: He got an A in civics.
(CROSSTALK)
BARNICLE: But I also see a little kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
(APPLAUSE)
BARNICLE: And -- you know, who wore his little league uniform to bed the night before he played his first Little League game.
JOE BIDEN: That's exactly right.
(LAUGHTER)
BRZEZINSKI: That's very cute.
BARNICLE: I see someone who is now in the middle of a campaign, where one side is fuelled by fear -- fear of the future, fear of the other. I see a guy who has overcome trauma, tragedy, come back with great resilience.
What do you think about the message from Republicans, "Let's Make America Great Again," as if America needs to make great?
JOE BIDEN: Well -- well, look. The neighborhoods I grew up in, like this neighborhood in Claymont and Wilmington, the neighborhoods most of us grew up in, you know...
(APPLAUSE)
People are pretty tough. People are -- my dad used to say, I don't expect the government to solve my problems. I expect them to understand my problems, just understand my problems.
And I really, really, honest to God believe -- and I know you do, too, give ordinary Americans just an even chance. They can do extraordinary things. And that's not hyperbole. They can do extraordinary things.
And what has happened is there used to be a basic bargain here. And the bargain used to be, if I participated in the success of the venture I worked in, I got to -- I got to participate in -- in the profit.
That whole bargain has been broken. The whole corporate culture has changed.
I sat in my house, at the invitation -- I got asked by some of the leaders of the Fortune 20 companies, and including a guy you know, Fink Blackrock. They've come to my house, sitting with me. They want to talk about how the corporate culture has gone haywire, and there has to -- I -- I have a cartoon, Joe, in my office. It's a picture of a guy from the New Yorker, big rotund guy in a turtle-neck sweater, a black mask, and a black beret and big bag of money on the table.
He's being interrogated. And he looks over and he says, "How was I supposed to know he was a job creator?"
(LAUGHTER)
Well, my dad was a job creator, because he sold General Motors cars. He sold the damn cars. He created as many jobs as any investor in that company created. The people I grew up with busted their ass, busted their (inaudible).
(APPLAUSE)
And they looked, and they say, hey, wait a minute, where am I in this deal? What's happening? What's happening here?
BARNICLE: And where are those jobs going?
JOE BIDEN: Those jobs -- the jobs are still there. They're just not getting paid for those jobs.
Look, we've created more jobs than every other industrialized country combined -- combined, since we came into office. But what's happening now?
What's happening now is you go in and -- look, the Chamber of Commerce are not bad guys, but your team declared war on labor about 12 years...
SCARBOROUGH: My team -- my -- here's -- here's my team.
JOE BIDEN: No, no, long (ph), long.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, it was -- it was -- it was my team.
JOE BIDEN: I keep thinking you're a Republican.
(APPLAUSE)
SCARBOROUGH: Well, you know, I am a Republican. I -- I am a Republican.
JOE BIDEN: Oh, look.
SCARBOROUGH: I'll be -- I'll be glad to tell you, and this is certainly a good time, I didn't declare war on anybody.
BRZEZINSKI: We'll have a whole segment on his (inaudible).
SCARBOROUGH: I didn't -- I didn't declare war on anybody.
JOE BIDEN: No, I know -- I know you didn't.
SCARBOROUGH: But when you talk about the Chamber of Commerce...
JOE BIDEN: The Chamber -- look, here's the deal.
SCARBOROUGH: The Chamber of Commerce is actually split right now from a lot of Republicans.
JOE BIDEN: Well, it is now. It is now. But think of the last ten or 12 years.
The idea was organized labor was per se bad. Look, here's -- here's the thing -- I see Willie's looking like, where the hell is this guy going to say?
GEIST: No, no, I...
(LAUGHTER)
JOE BIDEN: But look, big -- big deal, like Barack and I did something that violated the Constitution.
We said, guess what, when companies take an hourly worker and say, you're now management, so I don't have to pay over time -- what the hell is going on, guys? Come on.
And so, we said, no, no, no. You've got to show he is actually -- he or she is doing some related management. Oh my god, this is an attack on business.
Come on. Democrats and Republicans from the '50s and '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s, we agreed on certain basic, basic things about the way in which labor and business work together. And -- and -- and it's not all -- labor's not been all right, by any stretch of the imagination.
But the things we argue about now, we argue about whether or not an hourly worker should be paid overtime?
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. Come on.
JOE BIDEN: Come on, man. You sound crazy.
SCARBOROUGH: So -- so -- so, before we go to break, and I know we have to go to break, you -- you're touching on these issues, which ironically the guy that Mike was talking about and we all are asking about, Donald Trump, you're talking about a guy right now who's connecting with those workers in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
BRZEZINSKI: And pitching (inaudible) an hour.
SCARBOROUGH: Who's connecting with those people in Youngstown, Ohio.
JOE BIDEN: You're absolutely right.
SCARBOROUGH: Who's connecting with those white working-class voters in a way that you have your entire career. And in a way that Hillary Clinton is not.
You can just look at the numbers right now. Why is that?
JOE BIDEN: That's why I'm going to be living in (ph) Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan.
(LAUGHTER)
SCARBOROUGH: Over the next six months. Now, why is that?
JOE BIDEN: I -- I -- I think it's two reasons.
One, I think the Democratic Party overall hasn't spoken enough to those voters. They've done the right thing for the voter. Haven't spoken to them. We don't walk in -- like for example, Joe, you and I talked about this. If there's a cop in America that doesn't support me, I don't know where it is.
SCARBOROUGH: Don't know -- yes.
JOE BIDEN: Now, I'm not -- I'm being -- I'm not being facetious. These are guys I grew up with.
SCARBOROUGH: OK.
JOE BIDEN: But I also have overwhelming support from the African-American community. Everybody says how -- how can that be? There's nothing special about me. I talk to those cops. I keep in contact with them.
SCARBOROUGH: Have Democrats stopped talking to...
JOE BIDEN: I think...
SCARBOROUGH: ... white working class voters?
JOE BIDEN: I think we have in -- in part, and the reason is we've been consumed with crisis after crisis after crisis. And so I go in my old neighborhood and they go, "Joe, hey. Joe, over here, you know, what about me?" And I say, well look, all these things that are happening -- look, you know, what are the things that affect middle class families?
Let me define by middle class, being able to own your own house, not have to rent it, being able to send your kid to a park, they can come home safe, being able to take care of your geriatric parent after the one other dies, being able to send your kid to a local school to go well to get to college and to (inaudible) get them there if they get in. That -- that's -- that's not asking too much.
And so I said, look -- look what we're doing with college assistance and Pell grants. And -- but -- we do -- we have the right policies but I don't we spend enough time saying -- I know we're running out of time. Here, let me say it this way. I had a Senate staff and it was pretty consistent. I mean, they knew me well and they knew my (inaudible). Got to be vice president, new people, new staff.
And anybody who would begin to say you're going to speak to such and such, here's an outline. And I said just every speech you write, just understand one thing, in the very beginning make sure they know that I know what they're concerned about, that I know what their problem is. Whether I agree with them or not, the solution (ph), let them know I know what's worrying them and why it's not illegitimate they're worried and then give an answer.
We instead go in and sort of the -- in the old days, the limousine liberals, we -- we'd want to say (ph)...
SCARBOROUGH: Mike's (ph) still a limousine liberal.
BRZEZINSKI: We understand.
SCARBOROUGH: But go ahead.
JOE BIDEN: Yeah, right.
(LAUGHTER)
You know -- no, it's like I got the answer for you.
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
JOE BIDEN: I got the answer for you. The -- I think there has been in both parties not enough -- this is going to sound strange -- enough respect shown...
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, absolutely.
JOE BIDEN: ... to ordinary people busting their necks.
(APPLAUSE)
SCARBOROUGH: Stay right there (inaudible) with the vice president. We've got a lot more.
BRZEZINSKI: More of the vice president after a quick break right here on "Morning Joe" live in Philadelphia.
(APPLAUSE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(LAUGHTER)
BRZEZINSKI: That is Vice President Joe Biden and his TV counterpart doing what they do best, but you know what?
SCARBOROUGH: So -- so -- Val...
BIDEN: You should be sitting here.
SCARBOROUGH: You say it's very tough actually raising an older brother.
(LAUGHTER)
You know -- you know what we say in our house, big kids big problems? It just keeps getting harder, doesn't it?
(CROSSTALK)
OWENS: But you know, it's worth it. Yes he's turned out well.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.
OWENS: Yeah, he's turned out well.
(APPLAUSE)
SCARBOROUGH: You've got a brother here too, don't you? We're going to get him up here, too. So now (inaudible).
BRZEZINSKI: Come on (inaudible).
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: Come on up real quickly. Come on up.
(APPLAUSE)
SCARBOROUGH: So brother Jimmy, this is how much -- this is how much the Bidens love each other. When Joe became vice president, actually the Secret Service said he looks a lot like you. Can we get him to drive in the front car?
(LAUGHTER)
BIDEN: By the way, that's not a joke. They did say it...
SCARBOROUGH: And you (inaudible)?
JIMMY BIDEN: Hell yeah, man.
(LAUGHTER)
BRZEZINSKI: That's...
SCARBOROUGH: Everybody has a role.
(CROSSTALK)
OWENS: More (inaudible).
BRZEZINSKI: Love it. More with Vice President Biden and we'll bring in the (inaudible)...
SCARBOROUGH: Great to see you hear. Thank you.
BRZEZINSKI: ... wrote the book on the V.P. We'll look at the legacy of the second highest office in the United States. The conversation continues in three minutes right here on "Morning Joe."
(APPLAUSE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(APPLAUSE)
SCARBOROUGH: "Morning Joe" live from Philadelphia. Still with us onset, Vice President Joe Biden.
And also (ph) joining us, professor of law at Saint Louis University, a leading authority on the vice presidency, Joel Goldstein. His latest book is the "White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden."
Welcome, Joel. Good to see you.
GOLDSTEIN: Thanks for having me.
SCARBOROUGH: Mr. Vice President, let me ask you a question. Tonight, you'll be making the lead speech on a Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention. You made a decision several months ago that everybody understood, for personal reasons, not to get into this race to be president of the United States. Is there a part of you as you sit here this morning that wishes you were making the speech tomorrow night?
JOE BIDEN: No, really, because as a matter of fact, Jill and I were talking about it last night. It was really just the right decision, I mean, for my family. And I -- I plan on staying involved. I'm not going away.
(APPLAUSE)
That's different than would I like to make some of those decisions. Do I think I -- look, you know, I got in trouble with Jill for saying, you know, anybody who runs for president, if they don't believe they're the most qualified person in the country to do it, they shouldn't run. And I -- so there's things that I wish I could manage these next four years. But -- but it was -- I don't -- I don't have many regrets and that's not one of them.
(UNKNOWN): Is there any part of you, though, that thinks you'd be doing better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton is doing?
SCARBOROUGH: Come on. Of course (inaudible).
(APPLAUSE)
BRZEZINSKI: Come on. That's a bad...
JOE BIDEN: No, no. Look. Look.
SCARBOROUGH: You ask a guy that question...
BRZEZINSKI: In a pub...
SCARBOROUGH: ... he's going to say -- in a pub and he's going to go, no, of course.
(LAUGHTER)
JOE BIDEN: No, no, no, no. Look, I --I have not -- I learned one thing.
BRZEZINSKI: We'll get here there.
JOE BIDEN: The way to become really popular is announce you're not running for president.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
BRZEZINSKI: Amazing.
JOE BIDEN: It's amazing what it does for you.
(UNKNOWN): So the vice presidencies of Richard Cheney and Joseph Biden, the significant differences, it would seem to me and (ph) to a lot of people, would be the Cheney's vice presidency was intent from September 12, 2001 to creating his own intelligence unit within the vice president's office, going after Saddam Hussein almost immediately after September 11 and he played a significant role in the Bush presidency.
Tell me about the differences that you've seen, perceived, written about between the vice presidencies of Joe Biden and Dick Cheney.
GOLDSTEIN: I think they were both powerful, as you suggest. I mean, during the Cheney period, people were talking about an imperial vice presidency and -- and the joke that President Bush was a heartbeat away from the presidency.
When -- when Vice President Biden gave his acceptance speech at the 2008 convention, he said that, "If I become vice president, the most frightening words in the English language will no longer be the vice president's office is on the phone."
I think that -- that vice president...
(LAUGHTER)
Vice President Cheney's influence really dissipated. It decreased over time. Vice President Biden had to make up really for some of the pushback against the office.
I think he was able to establish a close relationship with the president and over -- over the eight years has sustained that where he's really done remarkable things, both in terms of his advising role and the assignments that he's taken on.
BARNICLE: When you have had disagreements with the president, and I know you've had disagreement with him, how long did those disagreements last, become personal -- do they become personal?
JOE BIDEN: They haven't become personal because the thing I love about my guy is that we made a deal for real in the beginning. Whatever we had on our chest, we would get it off our chest. And we hollered (ph) each other, we had private lunches together, we disagree.
But the advantage I've had -- and I used to say this -- I debated him and everyone else 13 times in that race trying to get the nomination. And if you go back and look, he and I never disagreed on a major substantive issue. We disagreed on tactic (ph). So I knew I was in a comfort zone where he and I were on the same page on all of the major issues.
And so -- but no, it's never lasted and I -- you know, the president is no drama Obama, I remember him saying about two years in. And he said you know, we've become really good friends I never expected that. And I looked at him and I said I didn't either.
(LAUGHTER)
BRZEZINSKI: That's nice.
JOE BIDEN: But all kidding aside, it's a -- there's a genuine trust. I trust him, he has character, I've never once worried that he was going to play a game with me.
And I know he trusts me and I don't know, Joel, you know more about it than I do in terms of -- no, I mean in terms of history. But it seems to me the most -- the most significant thing that has to occur is you have to be simpatico ideologically with the president and you have to understand there's a V in front of your name, you're the vice president.
BRZEZINSKI: Right.
JOE BIDEN: And the deal I made with the president was, if we ever had a fundamental disagreement on principle, I develop prostate cancer. I...
(LAUGHTER)
By the way, you know me, I wouldn't -- you know, if I had a fundamental disagreement, I'd find some excuse to why I couldn't do the job. But we never, never have. Yet we argue like hell, we -- not -- I mean, we're not shouting at each other all the time. But it's a -- we're very blunt with each other.
GEIST: Well, we've got about six months left here before you guys leave office, Mr. Vice President. So you're thinking about legacy, and one of those things has been the cancer moon shot.
Talk to people at home, there's no family in this country that's not been affected by cancer in one way or another. You, very directly, obviously give people hope about cancer.
How far away are we? Is there something on the horizon we can look to and say maybe we can beat this thing?
JOE BIDEN: The answer is yes, there's a number of things in the horizon and some -- look, we're at an inflection point. I didn't realize -- you know, when you have someone you love in trouble, you try to learn all there is about the problem they have.
And what I learned through Beau was that it wasn't until the last five years that immunologists started working with biologists (ph), working with chemical engineers, working with -- there was -- there was none of this collaboration taking place or very little of it. Now, they're all working together, number one.
Number two, the biggest thing I think they'll probably acknowledge to you (ph) is that you've got to breakdown these stove pipes. There's a tendency to hoard information, to not share information, to -- and I was just saying to Joe, if you're a astrophysicist and we give you a grant to study the stars, whatever you publish you've got to make it universally available immediately.
We do the same thing with grants for research and cancer research. It goes behind a wall for a year, it only can come out through certain publications. It's hoarded information. And it's part of a culture that has to change.
And -- but there's so many things. For example, last thing. Pretty soon, you're going to be able to -- your kids are going to be able to get a vaccine like you can for cervical cancer now. You can get a vaccine, like when you go get, you know, a shot for the measles early on, preventing cancer. They're learning now what's -- what is hereditary. They can tell -- they're going to do blood biopsies. You can find markers in your blood because some of these cancers take 10, 20 years to develop.
They're close to being able to say you got the marker for this or that or the other thing and we can take palliative action to make sure that this isn't going to develop. There's a lot of things, a lot of things on the horizon and I'm excited about it. And I think you're seeing the community come around and begin to be much more collegial in this effort.
BRZEZINSKI: A leader on this, and thank you for taking the time to talk to the children and my best friend Tia who's here. She's fighting pancreatic, fighting hard and...
JOE BIDEN: Tia, keep the faith, kid, keep the faith.
BRZEZINSKI: There you go, Vice President Joe Biden
(APPLAUSE)
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