Former Vice President Joe Biden laid the blame for Tuesday night’s debate spectacle squarely at the feet of President Donald Trump late Wednesday and blamed the president for turning the confrontation into a farce with his personal attacks.
Biden, speaking during a stop on his Amtrak “train tour” of Ohio and Pennsylvania, admitted that the debate was “embarrassing for the country” but said that was all Trump’s fault.
“I thought that was embarrassing for the country the way the president acted for the rest of the world watching this,” Biden said.
“I just thought that – it was hard for me to believe that a president of the United States would be so viciously classless and do what he did,” Biden claimed. “And all I kept thinking was I just, I just, I wonder how many people had to take their kids away from the television set when this was going on, just to say, this is not who we are.”
Trump leveled a number of personal attacks at his Democratic opponent, backing Biden into a corner over potential plans to “pack” the Supreme Court and laying blame for social unrest, still rocking cities like Portland, Oregon, at Biden’s feet.
But Biden — and, according to many critics, moderator Chris Wallace — are far from blameless in creating the spectacle.
“Biden, for his part, showed his frustration with Trump at times, telling him to ‘shut up, man’ and saying ‘everybody knows he’s a liar,'” according to Fox News. At one point, Biden referred to Trump as a “racist” and a “clown.”
In turn, Trump referred to the former vice president as a puppet of the far left and regularly talked over Biden and the moderator, Wallace. At one point, Trump even tangled with Wallace, suggesting that he was actually debating two opponents, not one.
On Wednesday, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced “format changes” to future debates, in an effort to prevent a repeat of Tuesday night, which saw Wallace quickly lose control over the two candidates. Going forward, moderators could be given the ability to shut off a candidate’s microphone if an answer goes on too long or the candidate keeps interrupting his opponent.
Biden says he’s looking forward to the more controlled environment.
But the next debate is going to be a town hall-type debate and I’m really looking forward to it because, as I understand it, audience members are going to ask us a question, we get to answer the question each of us,” Biden said to WKYC. “And I just hope there’s an opportunity to actually answer the question.”
That opportunity will come October 15th at the next presidential debate. That contest will be a “town hall” format, where questions will come from audience members and the moderator will handle just the candidates’ responses.
Related: Trump Challenges Moderator Chris Wallace: ‘I Guess I’m Debating You, Not Him. But That’s Okay.’