ROCK HILL, South Carolina — Former vice president Joe Biden joked Thursday afternoon that the new British prime minister, Boris Johnson, “looks like Donald Trump.”
Biden was speaking to over 300 supporters in a gymnasium at Clinton College, a historically black college, and responded specifically to a question about foreign policy.
The former vice president said that he was the most experienced candidate in matters of foreign policy, adding that he still knew most of the world’s leaders today, except Johnson — whom he referred to as the prime minister of “England.”
“He looks like Donald Trump,” Biden quipped, drawing laughter and applause.
Biden went on to stress that he would rebuild America’s alliances and strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Biden departed slightly from his stump speech to attack President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, reacting to misleading reports that children born to members of the U.S. armed forces overseas would not be citizens. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Ken Cuccinelli dismissed those reports Wednesday: “The policy update doesn’t deny citizenship to the children of US gov employees or members of the military born abroad. This policy aligns USCIS’ process with the Department of State’s procedures for these children – that’s it. Period.”
Biden also cited new reports that the administration was denying medical exemptions to migrant children with life-threatening diseases.
In response to a question about poor conditions at migrant detention facilities, Biden also told supporters that he would close them if elected president. He also claimed that the Obama administration had found that if illegal aliens were released, they could be counted on to appear for their court dates.
The former Vice President did not acknowledge that many of the facilities at the border were opened during the Obama administration, after a surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America.
Biden, who repeated false claims that President Donald Trump called neo-Nazis “very fine people” after the Charlottesville riots in 2017, concluded that he believed in the principles of equality enshrined in the country’s founding documents.
“We’ve never walked away from that commitment — We’ve never met it … But every single generation has moved the arc of justice just slightly, a little but every single time.”
He added: “I’m more optimistic about America today than I’ve ever been my whole life. … Everyone now understands what the dark side looks like.. and there’s a greater consensus to do the things we know we have to do than we’ve ever seen in our lifetime.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.