Joe Biden Says Ronald Reagan Couldn't Win 2016 Republican Nomination
Biden said the Republican Party has moved in an "extreme" direction.
— -- Speaking to young entrepreneurs in Dubai today, Vice President Joe Biden predicted former President Ronald Reagan would not have been able to win the GOP nomination in 2016 due to the current state of the Republican Party.
"I don't think you'll find anyone who'll challenge what I am about to say: if Ronald Reagan were alive today, seeking the nomination, he could no more get the nomination of the Republican Party than I can get the nomination. I'm not joking," the vice president said at Emirates Tower in Dubai. "What you see is this movement to the extreme in the Republican Party."
The vice president also said the U.S. is “reaping the downside of what has become a nasty political environment” and described American politics as “petty and venal.”
Biden has weighed in on the state of the 2016 campaign during previous foreign trips. On a trip to Mexico last month, the vice president decried the rhetoric used by some Republican presidential candidates.
"There's been a lot of damaging and incredibly inaccurate rhetoric and I would argue I felt almost obliged to apologize for some of what my political colleagues have said," Biden said in a news conference with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. "It is about Mexico, about the Mexican people. It's a heated campaign season and I just want you to know, Mr. President, that the most heated of the rhetoric you've heard from some of the competitors for the nomination for president is not who we are as the American people. It is not a view that is the view of the majority of the American people."
Biden is on a week-long tour of the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Jordan.