Joe Biden said Donald Trump had "no clue" about "what makes America great." | Getty Biden: Trump has ‘no clue’ The Democratic convention crowd erupts as the vice president declares Trump ‘has no clue about what makes America great.’

Vice President Joe Biden electrified the capacity crowd at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night as he delivered a withering takedown of Donald Trump and offered his full-throated support of Hillary Clinton.

He assailed the Republican presidential nominee, a man he described as historically unqualified to be commander in chief, dangerous and — despite his campaign slogan — oblivious to what makes America great. With the complicated, uncertain world of today, Biden said, Americans can’t risk electing Trump.


“The threats are too great, the times are too uncertain to elect Donald Trump as president of the United States,” Biden warned. “Now let me finish: No major party — no major party nominee in the history of this nation has ever known less or has been less prepared to deal with our national security.”

Biden suggested that to elect Trump president would be to betray this country’s values. “We cannot elect a man who exploits our fears of ISIS and other terrorists, who has no plan whatsoever to make us safer, a man who embraces the tactics of our enemies — torture, religious intolerance,” he said.



“You all know, all the Republicans know, that’s not who we are. It betrays our values,” he continued. “It alienates those who we need in the fight against ISIS. Donald Trump, with all his rhetoric, would literally make us less safe. We cannot elect a man who belittles our closest allies while embracing dictators like Vladimir Putin — no, I mean it — a man who seeks to sow division in America for his own gain and disorder around the world, a man who confuses bluster with strength. We simply cannot let that happen as Americans. Period.”

He presented Clinton’s life story as a tale of a selfless woman who’s always been there for others and hailed her as the only candidate who will come to the aid of families struggling to make ends meet, put students through college and take care of the elderly.

“That’s not Donald Trump’s story,” Biden said, before launching into a takedown of the billionaire. “His cynicism is unbounded. His lack of empathy and compassion can be summed in a phrase I suspect he’s most proud of having made famous: ‘You’re fired.’ I mean, really, I’m not joking.”

“Think about that,” he implored the crowd. “Think about everything you learned as a child, no matter where you were raised. How can there be pleasure in saying you’re fired? He’s trying to tell us he cares about the middle class? Give me a break. That’s a bunch of malarkey.”

The crowd erupted, but Biden kept going, insisting that Trump knows nothing about the middle class. “He has no clue about what makes America great. Actually, he has no clue period,” Biden said, his voice rising, as the audience yelled back, “Not a clue! Not a clue!”

Biden began his roughly 17-minute prime-time speech recalling the moment he accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for vice president eight years ago. He thanked President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama for allowing him and his wife, second lady Jill Biden, to serve alongside them in what he characterized as “the honor of our lives.”

He lavished praise on the Obamas — the president for his leadership and Michelle for her rousing speech on Monday — and thanked the country for their support of his grieving family.

“We think about the countless thousands of other people who’ve suffered so much more than we have with so much less support, so much less reason to go on,” Biden began. “But they get up, every morning, every day. They put one foot in front of the other. They keep going. That’s the unbreakable spirit of the people of America. That’s who we are.”

But his deeply personal address also starkly contrasted the two presidential candidates. Biden vouched for Clinton as a woman he’s known for decades — from before she was first lady to beyond their time together in the Senate and during her run as head of the State Department when Biden got into the White House. The two even had weekly breakfasts at his home when Clinton served in Obama’s Cabinet.

“Everybody knows she’s smart. Everybody knows she’s tough, but I know what she’s passionate about,” Biden said. “I know Hillary.”

Biden expressed his confidence in voters to choose Clinton over Trump at the ballot box, remarking that candidates have unsuccessfully attempted to appeal to voters’ fears in the past “because we do not scare easily.”

“The 21st century is going to be the American century because we lead not only by the example of our power but by the power of our example,” he added. “That is the history of the journey of America. And God willing — God willing, Hillary Clinton will write the next chapter in that journey.”

Biden energized the crowd at the Wells Fargo Center, speaking to a sea of Democrats, many of whom were waving Clinton campaign-style red “Joe” signs and blue “Scranton” signs. The two will campaign together for the first time at an event in Biden’s hometown of Scranton on Aug. 15.

But the roles could have been reversed. Biden could have easily been addressing the convention on a different night and in a very different capacity. He was a favorite among Democrats to win the primary, had he decided to run, even against the former secretary of state. But he ultimately quashed any hopes that he would succeed Obama when he announced last October that he was “out of time” to mount a winnable campaign.

His pronouncement that day in the Rose Garden came months after his son, Beau, a former Delaware attorney general and military veteran, died of brain cancer last May.

“In 2008, when he was about to deploy to Iraq, and again in 2012, our son Beau introduced me to the country and placed my name in nomination,” Biden said Wednesday. “You got a glimpse — I know I sound like a dad — but you got a glimpse of what an incredibly fine young man Beau was.”

Joe Biden full remarks Joe Biden's full remarks at the DNC on Wednesday.

The 2016 calendar didn’t work in Biden’s favor, though. Had he announced his campaign that day at the White House, he’d have already missed the first of a limited Democratic debate schedule and would have had just three-and-a-half months before the Iowa caucuses.

While he and President Barack Obama were neutral in the protracted primary, Biden was both critical and complimentary of the front-runner. A month after acknowledging in April that he would like to see a woman become president — and that America was ready for it — he expressed confidence that Clinton would become the Democratic nominee and the 45th president. But not without a parting shot. “I think I would have been the best president,” he told ABC’s Robin Roberts, prefacing his acerbic remark by recognizing that “it’s an awful thing to say.”

But in his speech Wednesday, Biden highlighted the historic nature of Clinton’s nomination and its impact on future generations.

“We all understand what it will mean for our daughters and granddaughters when Hillary Clinton walks into the Oval Office as president of the United States of America,” he said. “It will change their lives. My daughters and granddaughters can do anything any son or grandson can do, and she will prove it.”