Joe Biden might be the front-runner among Democratic presidential candidates, but that doesn’t mean he’s widely beloved by the party’s progressive base. A newly resurfaced video of Biden admitting that he genuinely likes former Vice President Dick Cheney, describing him as “a decent man,” has triggered Biden’s left-wing critics.
In a tweet noted by The Daily Caller, the Young Turks’ Emma Vigeland posted a video from 2015 of Biden’s positive comments about the man Democrats have portrayed as the Machiavellian architect of George W. Bush’s “warmongering” regime.
“First of all, I actually like Dick Cheney, for real,” said Biden. “I get on with him. I think he’s a decent man.”
Vigeland notes that Biden goes on to praise Cheney, “without irony,” as “extremely helpful” about the “legal parameters” of the office he assumed in 2009.
“[Walter] Mondale then says his view of Cheney is ‘a little bit different,'” Vigeland adds. “The crowd laughs.”
Vigeland also posted a video of the entire discussion:
Responses online from the Left to the “decent man” clip have been overwhelmingly negative. Some examples of posts replying to Vigeland’s original tweet:
This is wild. And it’s even scarier considering this is from 2015 so he wasn’t saying it to pander in an attempt to run for office…he genuinely feels this way
I would be a bit apprehensive towards anyone that describes a war criminal so positively…like sending thousands of my Brothers & Sisters to their deaths & murdering millions of innocent civilians for profit is just water under the bridge. Glad to see our sacrifice is so honored
Sooooo when’s the announcement that he’s dropping out. Soon? He just basically said Cheney was a “very fine person” sound familiar?
How quickly do people forget war crimes. I like people who aren’t war criminals.
Cheney belongs in Guantanamo with Bush and the rest of his admin for lying the US into two wars. War is bad. War under false pretenses is even worse. That should be obvious yet Biden thinks he can alter history and basic decency to defend himself for supporting the Bush admin.
Is anyone surprised? Biden was part of the warmongering Obama team that bombed more nations – and brokered more arms deals – than any other admin since WWII.
THIS is one of the BIG things I do not like about Joe Biden. He is old and out of touch, trying to play 20th century collegial “good old boy” politics with a viper. There is absolutely ZERO good in Dick Cheney. Nada!
He’s so entrenched. Biden can’t see the cruelty of cheney n pence and the disastrous real life results because to him they’re just people he mingles with at cocktail parties.
As TheDC notes, the video prompted a rebuke from MSNBC host Chris Hayes and racial activist Shaun King, who added another video he presents as damning to the presidential candidate. “Joe Biden has many absolutely gross moments where he fought for mass incarceration. This is one of the worst,” King tweeted Thursday. “His crime bill already passed. Here he brags about writing the law requiring states to double the average length of prison sentences if they wanted federal dollars.”
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