President Trump distinguished himself as an outsider to politics relative to Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Thursday night, asserting that he ran for president in 2016 “because of” the former vice president.
Trump met Biden, who served as vice president under the Obama administration, on a stage in Nashville for the second and final presidential debate of the 2020 campaign. In a discussion over criminal justice reform, Trump knocked Biden putting forward plans ostensibly to help the black community that the Obama administration never implemented in eight years.
“But why didn’t he do it four years ago? Why didn’t you do that four years ago, even less than that? Why didn’t you do it?” Trump asked Biden. “You were vice president. You keep talking about all these things you’re gonna do, and you’re gonna do this, but you were there just a short time ago and you guys did nothing.”
Trump then slammed Biden and former President Barack Obama for doing a “poor job” while in office. The president also derisively labeled Biden a “politician,” a likely reference to Biden’s over four decades in Washington before leaving office with Obama at the start of 2017.
“You know, Joe, I ran because of you. I ran because of Barack Obama, because you did a poor job. If I thought you did a good job, I would have never run. I would have never run. I ran because of you. I’m looking at you now, you’re a politician. I ran because of you,” Trump said.
TRUMP: "I’m looking at you, you’re a politician. I ran because of you." pic.twitter.com/eTADG8WPLV
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 23, 2020
Earlier in the night, Biden repeated a falsehood that the fact-checking site PolitiFact labeled its “Lie of the Year” in 2013, claiming that the Obama administration’s landmark health care law, the Affordable Care Act, did not push any Americans off of private insurance.
“The idea that I want to eliminate private insurance, the reason why I had such a fight with 20 candidates for the nomination was I support private insurance,” Biden said. “That’s why I didn’t, not one single person with private insurance would lose their insurance under my plan, nor did they under Obamacare. They did not lose their insurance unless they chose they wanted to go to something else.”
PolitiFact rated the claim that not a single person was pushed off private insurance under Obamacare as its 2013 “Lie of the Year” largely because members of the Obama administration, including former President Obama, continued to repeat the falsehood while promoting the landmark health care law.
PolitiFact wrote in part:
It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” President Barack Obama said — many times — of his landmark new law.
But the promise was impossible to keep.
So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.
Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.
For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice.