Vice President Joe Biden spoke to a Scranton, Pennsylvania, crowd Monday—but his approach was more like an elder imparting life lessons to his family than a politician ginning up votes. Often talking in hushed confidential tones as he campaigned with Hillary Clinton in the critical Rust Belt state, Biden told rally attendees that what bothered him most about Donald Trump was his "unbridled" cynicism. America, he said, can be summed up in a single word: "possibilities."
"That is the America I know. That is the America Hillary Clinton knows," he said, before laying out his criteria for what makes someone trustworthy in his book. "The people I trust most in public life—I've been doing this a long time—I trust the people where the feeling starts in their gut, moves to their heart and then is articulated by a great mind. Hillary understands the hopes and aspirations of the people in Claymont and Scranton and of every Scranton and Claymont in the United States of America," he said, name-checking both the Pennsylvania town he was born in and the Delaware town where he grew up.
Biden’s debut campaign speech was one part character witness for Clinton, and two parts scared straight on Trump. It was no accident the vice president connected impulses of the gut and motivations of the heart with the seasoning of knowledge. Biden later told the audience that although Donald Trump is the least prepared candidate in history to run for president, what scares him most is Trump’s complete lack of interest in learning what he doesn’t know. In fact, that lack of intellectual curiosity is more frightening than Trump's notorious temperament issues, in Biden’s view.
"People say he lacks the temperament to be president—I'd feel better if that's all he lacked," Biden said. "On every issue that matters most to our security, Donald Trump has no clue what it takes to lead this great country."
Biden then pounded home the consequences of Trump's national security failings by illustrating how his ignorance is already impacting U.S. troops deployed around the world. Recalling Trump's assertion last week that President Obama and Clinton co-founded ISIS, Biden said the leader of the militant group Hezbollah—an enemy of ISIS and ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad's—told his followers that Clinton and Obama founded ISIS as a statement of fact, based on Trump’s whimsical remarks. The upshot, Biden said, is that Hezbollah forces are more likely to view U.S. soldiers as the enemy.
"If my son were still in Iraq," Biden said of his deceased son Beau, an Iraq War vet, "and I say to all those that are there, the threat to their life has gone up a couple of clicks."
Biden ended his speech much like he did at the Democratic convention, with a patriotic warning to “never ever ever” bet against the U.S.
“We never bow, we never bend, we never kneel, we never yield—we own the finish line!”