Vice President Joe Biden’s brother has revealed that the family’s Pennsylvania branch voted for Donald Trump after feeling ‘slighted’ by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The Scranton-born Joe Biden, 76, has been contemplating a run against Trump, 72. His younger brother Frank, 65, predicted he would run, and said he would make a decision with family members ‘very soon.’
He also spoke to the Palm Beach Post about the failures of the Clinton campaign. Joe Biden helped clear the way for Clinton when he decided not to run, citing the death of his son Beau, after a battle with brain cancer.
‘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,’ he said, citing Clinton’s loss of the Keystone state.
‘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, he continued. ‘Assumptive politics is losing politics. 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,’ he added.
Clinton did campaign in Michigan, though only late in the campaign, and ended up losing the state. She didn’t go to Wisconsin, another state she lost. Her final event of the campaign as in Philadelphia, but she still lost a state where she, too, had family roots.
Frank Biden, a senior advisor to a Florida law firm, predicted: ‘I think we’re going to run.’
He told the Palm Beach paper, which sometimes writes about President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in its society pages: ‘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.’
He added: ‘I believe Joe should run. I’m urging him to run and have been for a long, long time.’ But he offered a caveat: ‘You have to understand our family structure. I’m the youngest brother. My sister’s the real boss. And Jill [Biden’s wife]. It’s an Irish matriarchy. They have the greatest influence,’ he said, mentioning Valerie Biden Owens.
He also took a shot at independent Bernie Sanders, who is considering his own run and who battled Clinton.
‘My personal politics are not as far left as many of the candidates seem to be. You know, Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. He’s not a member of the Democratic Party. He’s an avowed socialist. I’m not. But there’s some shared ideas. This idea of having to be put in a bag, having to be either this or that ideologically I think is hugely limiting. What I know Joe looks at is he looks at an individual policy decision based on its merits,’ he said.
Of his older brother’s health, he said: ‘I laugh, I mean, the most laughable thing to me because I’m an exercise nut, and I look at this president, who is obese and probably couldn’t walk 18 holes of golf, is compared to Joe in some way, shape or form.’
He continued: ‘Joe works out four days a week. He’s in better shape than he was when he was 65.’
SOURCE: Daily Mail, Geoff Earle
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