Relatives of former Vice President Joe Biden supported then-candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, the politician’s brother revealed this week.
In an interview with the Palm Beach Post published Monday, Frank Biden, 65, lambasted Clinton’s 2016 White House bid, claiming his older sibling would have won Pennsylvania and campaigned harder in Michigan.
“We never would have lost Pennsylvania, and all my relatives — the Finnegan family — who voted for Donald Trump because they felt slighted by Hillary and her campaign,” Biden, senior adviser at the Berman Law Group, told the Florida newspaper.
His mother, Catherine “Jean” Biden, was a Finnegan.
Candidate Trump won 48.6 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania, winning 20 electoral votes, while Clinton garnered 47.9 percent.
Joe Biden, 76, was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“We never would have not gone to Michigan as the campaign decided not to do because they felt entitled to the votes of those people. Assumptive politics is losing politics,” he continued. You have to work for every single vote and people have to know individually, collectively and severally that you care about them, that they’re important.”
The younger Biden went on to criticize Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” gaffe targeting Trump’s supporters, calling it the “most idiotic political calculation.”
“[I]n the Catholic Church, they would call that the sin of pride,” Biden noted. “Who in God’s name am I to say that you have a fundamentally wrong moral position? Talk about lacking humility.”
Discussing the 2020 presidential race, Biden said he “absolutely, positively” wants Joe to challenge President Trump, who he predicted would be soundly beaten if his brother runs.
“I think we’re going to run,” Biden predicted. “You can say that ‘Frank thinks his brother’s going to run.’ Now, he could surprise me. But I know the family’s behind him 100 percent.”
The New York Times reported Biden is expected to decide in the next two weeks on whether he will run president in 2020. He has said both publically and privately that he believes he is the only Democrat challenger that could defeat President Trump in a general election.
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