US Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that not even Ronald Reagan could win this year’s Republican presidential nomination, as he lamented America’s “petty, venal and mean” politics while addressing an Arab audience.
Biden, a Democrat, said self-interested lawmakers had redrawn congressional districts to the point “where the Lord Almighty could not defeat a Republican,” which he said had encouraged the rise of more radical GOP candidates.
Biden told young Emiratis gathered in Dubai that such gerrymandering encourages candidates to adopt extreme positions, like saying they are going to “waterboard people ... and indiscriminately carpet-bomb” — an oblique reference to Republican candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who have vowed to use both against extremists in the Middle East.
“If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he could no more get the nomination of the Republican Party than I can get the nomination,” Biden said, referring to the US Republican president from the 1980s often praised by GOP candidates. “I’m not joking. So what you see is this movement to the extreme in the Republican Party.”
Those gathered to listen to Biden, a mix of young Emirati men and women identified by local leaders as innovators, quietly listened and laughed at times to the vice president’s hourlong talk. The meeting took place in Emirates Towers, a few floors above the offices of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE vice president and prime minister.
None asked about Trump’s most explosive comments for those living in the Gulf — his December statement in which he suggested banning Muslims from traveling to the United States. The GOP front-runner, whose name adorns a golf housing estate project on the outskirts of the futuristic city has been denounced by many in the region.
Biden went on to discuss “all this chaos” caused by the Republican presidential candidates who have gone overboard.
“The problem with American politics today is that it has become so petty, so mean,” he said. “The American public are not going to let it stand.”
Source: Arab News