Anyone care to explain what Biden meant by this?

[stopbush]

From the debate:

TODD: Vice President Biden, your first issue (of your presidency), Mr. Vice President?

BIDEN: I think you’ve so underestimated what Barack Obama did. He’s the first man to bring together the entire world, 196 nations to commit to deal with climate change immediately. I don’t–I don’t buy that. The first–the first thing I would do is make sure that we defeat Donald Trump.

TODD: Okay.

BIDEN: Period.

————————-

Care to explain? Doesn't defeating tRump happen BEFORE one assumes the presidency?

[pnwmom]

1. Did that come from a transcript of the whole thing? Can you post it so we can see

the context?

[tishaLA]

2. Here's the full transcript

I believe the first half of his answer is in response to Sen Sanders, who said "We need a political revolution. People have got to stand up and take on the special interests. We can transform this country."


https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/full-transcript-2019-democratic-debate-night-two-sortable-topic-n1023601

[pnwmom]

6. Thanks!

[customerserviceguy]

3. I think

Colbert or Fallon made that point during their monologue last week.

The explanation is that Joe Biden wanted one more opportunity to bring up Barack Obama, and then he veered off track to an attack on someone other than a fellow Democratic candidate, in order to get applause.

It was an effort to do a little bit more than just say: "Climate change." It did not come off as coherently as he would have liked it to.

[George II]

4. Seems like he's saying that he has to beat trump before he can tackle his first issue....

These "what's the first thing you'll do" questions are annoying. None of the candidates have the nomination, much less won the election. What's the point of these questions? But then again, it's Todd, so that explains a lot.

[Orangepeel]

5. He was intent on challenging the premise of the question

To his credit. The question was something like “Barack Obama didn’t do anything about climate change because he tried to do health care and presidents can only do one thing. What one thing would you do?”

That last part didn’t make sense, but I don’t hold that against him. It was very rushed, and a lot of them gave dumb answers to that dumb question.

[qazplm135]

7. It's pretty obvious

that he was trying to say that the first, first thing is to beat Trump...and then he was rejecting the premise of just doing one thing.

I actually agree with him on that...that whole question was stupid. Isolating ONE priority and the idea that you will only get to do one thing? Please. That's why most of the candidates ignored the only one thing premise and listed multiple things.

Now, Biden had a pretty off night so he said it poorly, but I think it's not hard to figure out where he was trying to go, and generally I agree with him on this one.

[StarfishSaver]

8. Sounds to me like he was saying his first order of business is to defeat Trump

What's wrong with that.