February 20, 2020

Joe Biden had a moderately good debate night. He held on, but didn't gain any ground. But afterward, in the spin room, he was great when asked directly about Trump's smears on him and the impeachment aftermath.

After Brian Williams did his usual long, drawn out question about Hunter Biden and the Biden name being dragged through Trump's impeachment, he asked this question:

We don't know the Biden family story from Joe Biden. So respectfully, Mr. Vice President, are you cool with that decision? Are you okay that your story was taken by other forces outside your family?

Okaaaay, sure. Of course he's not cool with it. Biden responded:

The answer is I am as you say cool with it, because you guys know for a fact that what they told and said about me are flat lies. You won't even run the ads that Trump has put forward. And the millions of dollars, over I don't know how many, 12 million, $15 million in negative ads.

Every single person on his, every single person who testified under oath that worked for this administration said I did my job well. I did it -- what the policy was. The European policy. IMF. Not a single person said I did anything other than what was honorable. Period. Period, period.

And I'll be darned if i'm going to play the president's game which he's an expert at which is to decide that what you're going to do is you're going to take the eye off of what he did and try to focus on something that has nothing to do with whether he did his job.

The Republicans in the Senate acknowledged, acknowledged what he did, acknowledged how they went after me unfairly. Acknowledged how they lied about me and in fact, what happened? They, in fact, acquitted him and now he has free reign.

Joe was just getting started, though.

I'm going to beat this man like a drum. I'm telling you. I can hardly wait to debate him. I want to debate him about corruption. Talk about corruption. This is the most corrupt president we've ever had in American history. I can hardly wait, Brian.

I'm not going to play his game. I'm not going to get into the idea of whether or not I have to defend anything. What he did was impeachable. He got impeached. He should have been convicted. They acknowledged he should have been. That he committed the crimes that he, in fact, they said he did but they said it wasn't enough to impeach him. This is outrageous.

Yep, I applaud all that. Well said. Nicolle Wallace asked the obvious question: Why didn't anyone say that on stage?

Why, you ask? "Because we ended up answering the questions that were asked, Nicolle," he said. "It's awful hard to get off the focus of what you're being asked to do."

The moderating was terrible. The questions were, at times, awful. But the moderating was especially bad. So yeah, a lot of things went unsaid because of that, but at least Biden got to say it somewhere.

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