Biden to ABC’s David Muir on Trump's Harris attacks: 'No president has ever used those words'

Biden and Harris' first joint interviews air Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

August 21, 2020, 10:15 PM

Former Vice President Joe Biden fiercely defended running mate Sen. Kamala Harris in an exclusive interview with ABC "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir on Friday, as she weighed in with her thoughts on President Trump's recent attacks against her.

"President Trump has referred to you as 'nasty,' a sort of 'madwoman,' a 'disaster,' the 'meanest,' 'most horrible,' 'most disrespectful of anybody in the U.S. Senate.' How do you define what you hear from the president?" Muir asked Harris during an interview with the pair in Delaware, right on the heels of both accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

"The idea that he would say something like that. No president -- no president has ever said anything like that. No president’s ever used those words," Biden said, after first letting Harris answer.

"And no president has said people coming out of fields with torches and spewing anti-Semitic bile and met by people who oppose them, and someone dies, and he says they're good people on both sides. No president of the United States has ever said anything like that ever," Biden added, referring to the clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

The California senator also told Muir on Friday that she considered the president's insults attempts at distraction.

"Listen, I really -- I think that there is so much about what comes out of Donald Trump's mouth that is designed to distract the American people from what he is doing every day," she said. "That is about neglect, negligence and harm to the American people."

"And incompetence," Biden said.

Watch "The Ticket: The First Interview," a special edition of "20/20," airing Sunday, Aug. 23 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, in which "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir and "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts conduct the first joint interviews with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris.

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