Trevor Noah: Joe Biden has 'enough baggage to fill an Amtrak car'
Joe Biden announced his campaign for president yesterday, joining a crowded Democratic field as an immediate frontrunner. And it’s not surprising that the former vice-president already has a well of popular support, at least in early polls, said Trevor Noah on Thursday’s Daily Show. “People don’t just love Joe Biden because he’s a down-to-earth, everyday man; people love him because he’s an adorable goofball. In fact, the only thing that spends more time in Biden’s mouth than those perfect teeth is his own foot.”
Noah turned a reel of clips featuring Biden’s signature gaffes. He touted “a three-letter word: jobs, jobs, jobs”. He talked about someone’s mother resting in peace when she was still alive. He encouraged a wheelchair-bound man to stand for a crowd.
Despite the comically bad errors, Biden has built a solid record as a dealmaker over four decades in federal government, from championing the Brady Bill on guns to even cooperating with current Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. “That’s right, Joe Biden was so good at getting stuff done that he even found a way to work with Mitch McConnell,” Noah said. “And they probably got along because Mitch was the only person Biden wouldn’t give a massage to,” he added in reference to recent allegations against Biden of uncomfortable touching by several women
Controversy aside, for decades, Noah summarized, “Biden’s been involved in issues that matter to Democrats – gun control, women’s rights, gay marriage. He was even one of the first to support trans rights, although he probably thought he was supporting trains, but that’s still very impressive.”
Anyone who has been in government for that long, though, is bound to have some baggage, “and Biden, oh man – he’s got enough baggage to fill and Amtrak car”, Noah said. Some of the largest bags include his role in passing the now-controversial 1994 crime bill, his vote for the Iraq war, comments against busing to desegregate schools in the 1970s and his skepticism over Anita Hill’s testimony of sexual harassment at Clarence Thomas’s supreme court confirmation hearing in 1992 (Biden conducted the hearing as then chair of the Senate judiciary committee).
In sum: “Joe Biden got a lot of things wrong back in the day. But on the upside, he managed to grow his hair back,” Noah said to a side-by-side comparison in which Biden has noticeably more white hair as an old man than gray hair in his middle age.
So will Biden be the Democrat who takes on Donald Trump? It’s too soon to tell, but “part of me hopes that it does happen just so that we get to watch the most entertaining debates of all time”, concluded Noah, who pulled out clips of the two trading barbs about beating each other up behind a high school gym.