-Vice President Joe Biden thank you so much
for being a guest on our show, "At Home Edition."
I can see you're at home or somewhere.
Where are you right now?
-I'm in Wilmington, Delaware, in my recreation room at home.
They set up a makeshift studio here.
I'm just getting used to what you're very used to.
-Wow. What is it like campaigning
during this time right now?
Like, a lot of virtual interviews?
-Well, a whole lot of virtual interviews.
And, you know, obviously, I'm keeping to the instructions.
I'm not going out of the house.
I can walk around the property, but I'm not going out.
I've been here.
I've been, you know, keeping my distance from folks
when they come in.
And everybody walks in, they put on rubber gloves
and a mask and the Secret Service, so...
-Wow. What is the day in the life?
I mean, when do you start interviews?
-Well, I usually start interviews --
I start off every day with about an hour to an hour and a half
with the medical docs I have on my team, giving me --
on the phone about the status of the coronavirus
here and around the world.
And then I do an economic brief
with the economists that work with me.
And then, from that point on --
Actually, I get up actually at 7:30, 8:00.
I work out upstairs. Keeps me a little bit sane.
And -- But then I start the day.
And I've been doing a lot of --
You know, a lot of livestream things
that I'm just getting used to.
And it's -- But it amazes me that everybody
is, you know, tuning in to so many different ways
to find out what's going on.
-Everyone's been real creative. -Yeah.
It's been interesting. -What is your --
If you're talking to all these experts,
what is your outlook on this whole pandemic?
-Well, I guess, in a nutshell, Jimmy,
the President waited too long to start taking it seriously.
You know, all the way back in January,
I went in major newspapers
saying that "We've got to get moving.
This is a real problem. We know what's coming.
And we know we've got to get better at our --
We've got to provide tests.
We got to be getting out and making sure
people understand what's about to come."
But it's been a lot of lag time.
You know, remember the President saying,
"This is gonna end shortly,"
And, "It's going to be like a miracle," et cetera.
That was in spite of everything he was being told
by the medical experts and the scientists
who were talking to him and to us
and to everyone, quite frankly.
But there's still -- you know, we're in tough shape right now.
This virus is gonna hit in a real big way
in the next several weeks to a month and a half.
But we have -- there's things we could do now, Jimmy,
to make it a lot less consequential
into the summer and beyond.
We still don't have enough tests out there.
We still don't have --
Our first responders aren't having the protection they need.
Doctors don't have the protection they need.
And every single day on your network and other networks,
they're showing, and I'm getting briefed on,
the number of doctors and nurses and first responders
who are being infected by the coronavirus
and, in turn, infecting other people.
So it's just -- we just have to move much, much
more rapidly, much more quickly.
-Can we use any of the information that we know
from China or Italy to help us?
-Yeah, yes, we can.
For example, we know that if you have social distancing early on
and you keep it moving, that, in fact, it reduces
and flattens that curve,
and people get, you know, faster than before.
President hadn't done that. Tests are critically important.
President talked about having 4 million tests available.
We're nowhere near that.
The President talked about being in a position where
we're gonna have every Walmart parking lot
and Walgreens, et cetera --
we were gonna have drive-through testing, et cetera.
Well, there's now, after he announced that
a couple weeks ago, five in America, five are open.
It just is -- It's just -- It really --
There's a sense of urgency that doesn't seem to --
Only until yesterday at his press conference
did the President start to grasp the reality of what he's facing,
in terms of the number of potential deaths,
the number of people who are gonna contract the virus.
Thank God the majority still,
you know, go on to live and get through it.
-Yeah. -But we've got a lot to do.
We're not getting it done.
-Well, New York, where I am, and Delaware, where you are,
we have strict stay-at-home orders.
-Yep.
-Why is there not a nationwide stay-at-home order?
-Well, look, I think we're in a position where
I think every state is gonna have to be
moving in that direction.
And it demonstrates that it does bend that curve a little bit.
It does increase the prospects that fewer people
are going to catch the virus.
And the answer is, I don't fully know.
We're leaving it to the governors.
Thank God the governors have been moving.
Your governor of New York's done one hell of a job.
I think he's sort of the gold standard.
-Yeah. -But governors --
Republican governors in Ohio, for example, have moved.
Mike DeWine has moved. You have your governor --
Republican governor in Massachusetts is moving.
And they constantly are questioning and actually saying,
"Mr. President, what you just said isn't the case.
It's not happening that way. Let's get it straight."
Look, the American people can take anything.
You got to tell them the truth, though.
You got to level with them. You got to tell them
what has to be -- what's expected of them
and what you're expected to do.
This is the president of the United States.
Back a while ago, Jimmy, I said he should invoke
this National Defense Act that's out there,
this Defense Production Act it's called.
And it makes the president -- gives him the authority
to go to industries and say,
"Look, we don't have enough ventilators."
Like, finally going out with General Motors now.
"You're now gonna make ventilators."
Why aren't we doing that with masks?
Why aren't we doing that with gowns?
Why aren't we doing -- you know, we have nurses
putting on garbage bags
to try to protect themselves, et cetera.
We need more tests, we need more protection
for our first responders and doctors and nurses,
and we need to move quickly to get that done.
He has the power to do it under the act
that I just referenced to.
It allows him to say, "You're gonna do
and you're gonna make these things.
And this is what you're gonna do now.
Get it done."
-How is this pandemic affecting the election?
Do you think voters will be more mailing in votes?
-I think so. You're already seeing that
in states that are talking about
still maintaining their primaries.
I think there's going to have to be a really hard look
at increasing the prospects in the secretaries of state
in each of the states to control the ballots,
that you, in fact, make it available
and work on mail-in votes.
But there are also gonna be places where you're still
gonna be able to have direct voting
if people keep their distance and they wash down the machines,
letting one person in at a time, et cetera.
So it's gonna depend on what kind of action is taken
between now and the middle of the summer
to change this curve as to what's gonna happen
going into the fall.
For example, I doubt whether the Democratic convention
is gonna be able to be held in mid July, early July.
I think it's gonna have to move into August.
And then -- And even then, the Republican
and Democratic conventions, we're gonna have to --
We just have to be prepared for the alternative.
And the alternative, we don't know what it's gonna be
unless we have a better sense of whether this curve
is gonna move down or up.
-I know you've been doing a lot of virtual town halls
and things like that and talking.
It's almost like bringing back the old fireside chats.
-Yeah.
-The last time I believe I saw you on stage
was at the Time 100, you got --
You were being honored as one of the Time 100.
And you were so eloquent and beautifully spoken
when you talked --
I want to say you quoted, was it Yeats?
It was a poet, or...?
-It could've been Yeats.
Or it could've been Seamus Heaney.
It could've been a number of Irish poets.
[ Both laugh ]
I used to be a stutterer, and the way I overcame as a kid,
stuttering, I'd read a lot of Irish poetry
and try to memorize it to get a cadence to what I was doing.
You know, there was -- -It was mind-blowing.
I think I was sitting at your table with --
I was with your -- with your lovely wife,
and Justin Timberlake was there, and you were performing.
We looked at each other, Justin and I, we're like, "Wow."
It was just really -- It was mind-blowing.
-Well, I find a lot of solace in -- in poetry.
There's a great -- There's a great poem that --
written by Seamus Heaney, who recently passed away,
an Irish poet. It's called "The Cure at Troy,"
and he said, "History teaches us not to hope
on this side of the grave, but then, once in a lifetime,
that long forward tidal wave of justice
rises up and hope and history rhyme."
That's what I think we should be looking at.
We should be able to come out of this in a way
like we always do as Americans.
We are the only country I'm aware of
that goes into things of overwhelming difficulty.
We overcome them, and we come out stronger.
And I think that's what we have to focus --
Look at what the American people are doing, Jimmy.
They're incredible. Instead of making fun of --
Like the President's going after governors he doesn't like
and that kind of thing.
What are they doing?
They're going around their neighborhoods.
Look, there's a friend of mine
used to work with me down in South Carolina.
He has a daughter in grade school.
He sent me a video of the schoolteacher,
the kindergarten teacher called all the kids in her class
and said, "Here's what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna ride by your house at such and such a time.
You sit out in the driveway on your tricycle
and wave to me. I miss you, want to see you."
Took her three hours to do it.
I mean, people are doing things --
My wife is working on --
We had a cancer initiative we worked on.
We got on the board of that initiative,
the Biden Cancer Initiative.
Called Jill, a board member, and said,
"Look, a lot of people are shut in.
They're frightened, they're older, they have cancer,
they're -- they need chemotherapy.
They're afraid to leave. Can we set up a program
where we call in to them, we write them notes?"
I mean, there's all kinds of things people are doing.
-We showed a video earlier, our announcer Steve Higgins,
his daughter, Anna Higgins,
is a nurse at Mt. Sinai in Manhattan.
And she videotaped her walking to work.
And everyone's out their windows cheering her on, going,
"Yeah! We got this!"
-Exactly right. Exactly right!
You know, I have a good friend who --
whose mom was in a nursing home.
She can't go see her. You know what she does?
She sits out in a chair outside the window of the nursing home
and just puts her hand up
and just touches her hand through the glass.
You know, I mean, these things make so much --
so much difference.
I try to make sure I call a couple of people
every day that are shut in.
I get calls from people, "Would you call my mom?
Would you call my uncle? Would you call --"
I mean, you're doing -- I mean, it's just people,
you know -- I -- I --
You know, when I started to run for office this time around,
I said, "We got to restore the soul of America."
You're seeing the soul of America now.
The American people, they're incredible.
Absolutely incredible what they're doing.
I watched one of the shows this morning
between my phone calls where a doctor said
how frightened he was to go into the operating room
because so many people had the virus.
But he said, "I watch these firemen,
and they rush into fires, and I thought,
'Well, I can screw up the courage to do it,
but I got to tell you I'm afraid.'"
And that's real courage.
Real courage is doing something
that you're afraid to do and you do it anyway.
That's what so many people are doing.
We're gonna get through this.
-We are, right? -We are.
-How are your grandkids? Are you talking to them?
-Yeah, I talk to them every single day.
[ Both laugh ]
I've been doing that forever, though.
There's a deal we have.
I have five grandchildren and --
And every single day, I either talk to them or we text.
But I have two them.
My deceased son Beau's children live about 8/10 of a mile
as the crow flies from where we are.
And they can walk through neighborhoods
and across the park area.
And they come out in the backside of the hou--
We're not allowed to hug them and kiss them,
but they stand out in the yard.
We sit on the porch and we tell stories
and we talk, find out what's going on in their day and so...
You know, it's -- you know, I got family scattered around
like I said I suspect everybody does.
-Well, I'm so happy that I got to chance to talk to you.
And you really lifted my spirits
and a lot of people that are watching.
So, I thank you --
-Jimmy, you lift people's spirits every day.
You do it every single day.
And you have a woman coming on, I'm told,
that's gonna be on your show. -Yeah.
-Tell her I love her, because I know she loves me.
We're good friends. -Okay.
-All kidding aside.
And my favorite song of hers is "Till It Happens to You."
Look at the lives she's changed. -Really?
-Look at the lives that she's changed.
-You're right. -She really has.
So, you know -- you know, and especially you every night
getting on that television, you make people laugh, man,
and that's what people have to do.
-Yeah. -They have to look at --
I appreciate you. -Thank you so much.
Thank you, thank you so much. I'll tell --
I'll tell Gaga you said hello. -Please do.
-Thank you so much again for doing this.
I appreciate it. -Thank you.
-Best to your wife. -Thank you.