-Vice President Joe Biden
thank you so much
for being a guest on our show,
"At Home Edition."
I can see you're at home
or somewhere.
Where are you right now?
-I'm in Wilmington, Delaware,
in my recreation room at home.
They set up
a makeshift studio here.
I'm just getting used
to what you're very used to.
-Wow.
What is it like campaigning
during this time right now?
Like, a lot of
virtual interviews?
-Well, a whole lot
of virtual interviews.
And, you know, obviously,
I'm keeping to the instructions.
I'm not going out of the house.
I can walk around the property,
but I'm not going out.
I've been here.
I've been, you know,
keeping my distance from folks
when they come in.
And everybody walks in,
they put on rubber gloves
and a mask
and the Secret Service, so...
-Wow.
What is the day in the life?
I mean, when do you start
interviews?
-Well, I usually start
interviews --
I start off every day with about
an hour to an hour and a half
with the medical docs
I have on my team, giving me --
on the phone about the status
of the coronavirus
here and around the world.
And then I do
an economic brief
with the economists
that work with me.
And then, from that point on --
Actually, I get up actually
at 7:30, 8:00.
I work out upstairs.
Keeps me a little bit sane.
And --
But then I start the day.
And I've been doing a lot of --
You know,
a lot of livestream things
that I'm just getting used to.
And it's --
But it amazes me that everybody
is, you know, tuning in
to so many different ways
to find out what's going on.
-Everyone's been real creative.
-Yeah.
It's been interesting.
-What is your --
If you're talking
to all these experts,
what is your outlook
on this whole pandemic?
-Well, I guess,
in a nutshell, Jimmy,
the President waited too long
to start taking it seriously.
You know, all the way back
in January,
I went in major newspapers
saying that
"We've got to get moving.
This is a real problem.
We know what's coming.
And we know we've got
to get better at our --
We've got to provide tests.
We got to be getting out
and making sure
people understand
what's about to come."
But it's been a lot of lag time.
You know, remember
the President saying,
"This is gonna end shortly,"
And, "It's going to be
like a miracle," et cetera.
That was in spite of everything
he was being told
by the medical experts
and the scientists
who were talking to him
and to us
and to everyone, quite frankly.
But there's still -- you know,
we're in tough shape right now.
This virus is gonna hit
in a real big way
in the next several weeks
to a month and a half.
But we have -- there's things
we could do now, Jimmy,
to make it a lot less
consequential
into the summer and beyond.
We still don't
have enough tests out there.
We still don't have --
Our first responders aren't
having the protection they need.
Doctors don't have
the protection they need.
And every single day on your
network and other networks,
they're showing,
and I'm getting briefed on,
the number of doctors and nurses
and first responders
who are being infected
by the coronavirus
and, in turn,
infecting other people.
So it's just --
we just have to move much, much
more rapidly,
much more quickly.
-Can we use any of the
information that we know
from China or Italy to help us?
-Yeah, yes, we can.
For example, we know that if you
have social distancing early on
and you keep it moving, that,
in fact, it reduces
and flattens that curve,
and people get,
you know, faster than before.
President hadn't done that.
Tests are critically important.
President talked about having
4 million tests available.
We're nowhere near that.
The President talked about
being in a position where
we're gonna have every
Walmart parking lot
and Walgreens, et cetera --
we were gonna have drive-through
testing, et cetera.
Well, there's now,
after he announced that
a couple weeks ago,
five in America, five are open.
It just is --
It's just -- It really --
There's a sense of urgency
that doesn't seem to --
Only until yesterday at his
press conference
did the President start to grasp
the reality of what he's facing,
in terms of the number
of potential deaths,
the number of people who are
gonna contract the virus.
Thank God the majority still,
you know, go on
to live and get through it.
-Yeah.
-But we've got a lot to do.
We're not getting it done.
-Well, New York, where I am,
and Delaware, where you are,
we have strict
stay-at-home orders.
-Yep.
-Why is there not a nationwide
stay-at-home order?
-Well, look, I think
we're in a position where
I think every state
is gonna have to be
moving in that direction.
And it demonstrates that it does
bend that curve a little bit.
It does increase the prospects
that fewer people
are going to catch the virus.
And the answer is,
I don't fully know.
We're leaving it
to the governors.
Thank God the governors
have been moving.
Your governor of New York's
done one hell of a job.
I think he's sort of
the gold standard.
-Yeah.
-But governors --
Republican governors in Ohio,
for example, have moved.
Mike DeWine has moved.
You have your governor --
Republican governor
in Massachusetts is moving.
And they constantly are
questioning and actually saying,
"Mr. President, what you
just said isn't the case.
It's not happening that way.
Let's get it straight."
Look, the American people
can take anything.
You got to tell them
the truth, though.
You got to level with them.
You got to tell them
what has to be --
what's expected of them
and what you're expected to do.
This is the president
of the United States.
Back a while ago, Jimmy,
I said he should invoke
this National Defense Act
that's out there,
this Defense Production Act
it's called.
And it makes the president --
gives him the authority
to go to industries and say,
"Look, we don't
have enough ventilators."
Like, finally going out
with General Motors now.
"You're now gonna make
ventilators."
Why aren't we doing that
with masks?
Why aren't we doing that
with gowns?
Why aren't we doing --
you know, we have nurses
putting on garbage bags
to try to protect themselves,
et cetera.
We need more tests,
we need more protection
for our first responders
and doctors and nurses,
and we need to move quickly
to get that done.
He has the power to do it
under the act
that I just referenced to.
It allows him to say,
"You're gonna do
and you're gonna make
these things.
And this is what
you're gonna do now.
Get it done."
-How is this pandemic
affecting the election?
Do you think voters will be more
mailing in votes?
-I think so.
You're already seeing that
in states that are talking about
still maintaining
their primaries.
I think there's going to
have to be a really hard look
at increasing the prospects
in the secretaries of state
in each of the states
to control the ballots,
that you, in fact,
make it available
and work on mail-in votes.
But there are also gonna be
places where you're still
gonna be able to have
direct voting
if people keep their distance
and they wash down the machines,
letting one person in at a time,
et cetera.
So it's gonna depend on
what kind of action is taken
between now
and the middle of the summer
to change this curve
as to what's gonna happen
going into the fall.
For example, I doubt whether
the Democratic convention
is gonna be able to be held
in mid July, early July.
I think it's gonna have to
move into August.
And then -- And even then,
the Republican
and Democratic conventions,
we're gonna have to --
We just have to be prepared
for the alternative.
And the alternative, we don't
know what it's gonna be
unless we have a better sense
of whether this curve
is gonna move down or up.
-I know you've been doing
a lot of virtual town halls
and things like that
and talking.
It's almost like bringing back
the old fireside chats.
-Yeah.
-The last time I believe
I saw you on stage
was at the Time 100, you got --
You were being honored
as one of the Time 100.
And you were so eloquent
and beautifully spoken
when you talked --
I want to say you quoted,
was it Yeats?
It was a poet, or...?
-It could've been Yeats.
Or it could've been
Seamus Heaney.
It could've been
a number of Irish poets.
[ Both laugh ]
I used to be a stutterer,
and the way I overcame as a kid,
stuttering,
I'd read a lot of Irish poetry
and try to memorize it to get
a cadence to what I was doing.
You know, there was --
-It was mind-blowing.
I think I was sitting
at your table with --
I was with your --
with your lovely wife,
and Justin Timberlake was there,
and you were performing.
We looked at each other,
Justin and I, we're like, "Wow."
It was just really --
It was mind-blowing.
-Well, I find a lot of solace
in -- in poetry.
There's a great --
There's a great poem that --
written by Seamus Heaney,
who recently passed away,
an Irish poet.
It's called "The Cure at Troy,"
and he said,
"History teaches us not to hope
on this side of the grave,
but then, once in a lifetime,
that long forward
tidal wave of justice
rises up
and hope and history rhyme."
That's what I think
we should be looking at.
We should be able
to come out of this in a way
like we always do as Americans.
We are the only country
I'm aware of
that goes into things
of overwhelming difficulty.
We overcome them,
and we come out stronger.
And I think that's
what we have to focus --
Look at what the American people
are doing, Jimmy.
They're incredible.
Instead of making fun of --
Like the President's going after
governors he doesn't like
and that kind of thing.
What are they doing?
They're going around
their neighborhoods.
Look, there's a friend of mine
used to work with me
down in South Carolina.
He has a daughter
in grade school.
He sent me a video
of the schoolteacher,
the kindergarten teacher
called all the kids in her class
and said,
"Here's what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna ride by your house
at such and such a time.
You sit out in the driveway
on your tricycle
and wave to me.
I miss you, want to see you."
Took her three hours to do it.
I mean,
people are doing things --
My wife is working on --
We had a cancer initiative
we worked on.
We got on
the board of that initiative,
the Biden Cancer Initiative.
Called Jill, a board member,
and said,
"Look, a lot of people
are shut in.
They're frightened,
they're older, they have cancer,
they're --
they need chemotherapy.
They're afraid to leave.
Can we set up a program
where we call in to them,
we write them notes?"
I mean, there's all kinds
of things people are doing.
-We showed a video earlier,
our announcer Steve Higgins,
his daughter, Anna Higgins,
is a nurse at Mt. Sinai
in Manhattan.
And she videotaped
her walking to work.
And everyone's out their windows
cheering her on, going,
"Yeah! We got this!"
-Exactly right.
Exactly right!
You know,
I have a good friend who --
whose mom was in a nursing home.
She can't go see her.
You know what she does?
She sits out in a chair outside
the window of the nursing home
and just puts her hand up
and just touches her hand
through the glass.
You know, I mean,
these things make so much --
so much difference.
I try to make sure
I call a couple of people
every day that are shut in.
I get calls from people,
"Would you call my mom?
Would you call my uncle?
Would you call --"
I mean, you're doing --
I mean, it's just people,
you know -- I -- I --
You know, when I started to run
for office this time around,
I said, "We got to restore
the soul of America."
You're seeing
the soul of America now.
The American people,
they're incredible.
Absolutely incredible
what they're doing.
I watched one of the shows
this morning
between my phone calls
where a doctor said
how frightened he was to go
into the operating room
because so many people
had the virus.
But he said,
"I watch these firemen,
and they rush into fires,
and I thought,
'Well, I can screw up
the courage to do it,
but I got to tell you
I'm afraid.'"
And that's real courage.
Real courage is doing something
that you're afraid to do
and you do it anyway.
That's what so many people
are doing.
We're gonna get through this.
-We are, right?
-We are.
-How are your grandkids?
Are you talking to them?
-Yeah, I talk to them
every single day.
[ Both laugh ]
I've been doing that forever,
though.
There's a deal we have.
I have five grandchildren and --
And every single day, I either
talk to them or we text.
But I have two them.
My deceased son Beau's children
live about 8/10 of a mile
as the crow flies
from where we are.
And they can walk
through neighborhoods
and across the park area.
And they come out
in the backside of the hou--
We're not allowed
to hug them and kiss them,
but they stand out in the yard.
We sit on the porch
and we tell stories
and we talk, find out what's
going on in their day and so...
You know, it's -- you know,
I got family scattered around
like I said
I suspect everybody does.
-Well, I'm so happy that I got
to chance to talk to you.
And you really lifted my spirits
and a lot of people
that are watching.
So, I thank you --
-Jimmy, you lift people's
spirits every day.
You do it every single day.
And you have a woman coming on,
I'm told,
that's gonna be on your show.
-Yeah.
-Tell her I love her,
because I know she loves me.
We're good friends.
-Okay.
-All kidding aside.
And my favorite song of hers
is "Till It Happens to You."
Look at the lives she's changed.
-Really?
-Look at the lives
that she's changed.
-You're right.
-She really has.
So, you know -- you know,
and especially you every night
getting on that television,
you make people laugh, man,
and that's what people
have to do.
-Yeah.
-They have to look at --
I appreciate you.
-Thank you so much.
Thank you, thank you so much.
I'll tell --
I'll tell Gaga you said hello.
-Please do.
-Thank you so much again
for doing this.
I appreciate it.
-Thank you.
-Best to your wife.
-Thank you.
