Former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton formally endorsed Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden bid for presidency on Tuesday during a virtual Town Hall discussing the impact of the coronavirus on women.
“I’ve not only been a colleague of Joe Biden’s, I’ve been a friend. And I can tell you that I wish he were president right now, but I can’t wait until he is if all of us do our part,” Clinton said. “I am thrilled to be part of your campaign to not only endorse you, but to help highlight a lot of the issues that are at stake in this presidential election.”
She added, “Think of what it would mean if we had a real president, not just somebody who plays one on TV, but somebody who gets up every morning worried about the people that he’s responsible for leading during this crisis.”
Biden introducing Clinton during Tuesday virtual event as “a woman who should be president of the United States” and called her support a “wonderful personal endorsement.”
Clinton teased her endorsement with a tweet Tuesday afternoon: “A little hint about who the surprise guest will be for @JoeBiden‘s 3pm ET town hall today: (She’s excited.)”
“I want to add my voice to the many who have endorsed you to be our president,” she said during the town hall, adding that during pandemic times like this “this is a moment where we need a leader, a president, like Joe Biden.”
“I wish he were president right now,” she added, concluding her endorsement remarks before turning the conversation towards the coronavirus impact on women. “Joe Biden has been preparing for this moment his entire life. I’ve been privileged to work with him over the last 25-plus years as the first lady, then for eight years in the Senate, where I watched him build coalitions and bring people together, then in the Obama administration, where I was secretary of state.”
The endorsement from Clinton comes simultaneously as the media is slowly reporting sexual assault allegations against Biden by a former Senate staffer in 1993 when he was a Delaware senator. The former Vice President has yet to directly addressed the allegations from Tara Reade, while his campaign is left off to deny the claims.
Neither Biden or Clinton mentioned the accusation, despite a viewer question asking about ways to help domestic violence victims stuck with their abusers during the quarantine lockdown. Instead as a response, Clinton praised Biden’s work on the Violence Against Women Act that she said is legislation that he “wrote” and “led” before pivoting to his website on “progressive detailed set of policies” Biden released earlier addressing violence against women during this crisis.
Reade, shortly after blasted Clinton for “enabling a sexual predator” by endorsing Biden.
“I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I voted for her in the primary. I’m a lifelong Democrat. But yet, what I see now is someone enabling a sexual predator and it was my former boss, Joe Biden, who raped me,” Reade told Fox News. “Hillary Clinton has a history of enabling powerful men to cover up their sexual predatory behaviors and their inappropriate sexual misconduct. We don’t need that for this country. We don’t need that for our new generation coming up that wants institutional rape culture to change. I will not be smeared, dismissed or ignored. I stand in truth and I will keep speaking out.”
Clinton is the latest Democratic figure to endorse Biden, follows those of former President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the backing of all of his former rivals, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
After news of Clinton’s endorsement was announced, Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale released a statement, calling both “Democrat establishment” that “carry
“There is no greater concentration of Democrat establishment than Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton together. Both of them carry the baggage of decades in the Washington swamp and both of them schemed to keep the Democrat nomination from Bernie Sanders,” Parscale wrote. “President Trump beat her once and now he’ll beat her chosen candidate.”
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