Former Vice President Joe Biden said failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is his friend and claimed he never considered running against her in 2016.
“I announced that I wasn’t going to run for the president last time — and I wasn’t going to run against Hillary; she’s my friend,” Biden said at an event at a pizza parlor in New Hampshire, noting that he did 83 events for Clinton in 2016.
Biden said he started thinking about running for president before Clinton announced her campaign but ultimately decided against it.
“I had planned on running before, and I put together an organization, but my son Beau made me promise. … I promised him that I would not tell anybody how sick he was,” Biden said.
Biden was considering a run for president after Beau Biden died from cancer in 2015 and even drafted a version of a possible campaign announcement speech. Obama’s political adviser, David Plouffe, however, discouraged him from mounting a 2016 bid, arguing that he would end up in third place in the Iowa primary.
Biden eventually endorsed Hillary Clinton in June 2016 at a high-profile event in Pennsylvania:
Joe. Let go of me. Joe… pic.twitter.com/9x8wWUYhBd
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) August 15, 2016
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