Joe Biden pointed to the Democratic Party’s electoral victories Tuesday as a sign that the public had grown fatigued of divisive language coming out of the West Wing. | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo Biden: Trump rhetoric ‘eating at the fabric of this country’

Former Vice President Joe Biden decried the “phony nationalism” of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying his rhetoric on matters like the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August is “eating at the fabric at this country.”

Biden, asked about his thoughts on Trump’s effect on American politics during an Axios event in Philadelphia, said the rise of Trump had led to a lack of “decency” in U.S. public discourse.


“You can disagree on issues but this has gotten so, sort of, coarse, so vile, so demeaning. And our children our listening,” the former vice president said at the event.

Biden was sharply critical of the president’s response to the August rally in Virginia, which drew white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other hate groups, as well as counter-protesters. By casting blame for the clashes between white nationalists and counter-protests on “both sides,” Biden argued that Trump had acted against some of the most fundamental American values.

“Did any one of you ever think that you would see, in one of the historic cities in America, folks coming out from under rocks and out of fields with torches carrying swastikas literally reciting the same, the same exact anti-Semitic bile that you heard and we heard in the 30s?” Biden said, recalling the far-right rally to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that left one counter-protester dead.

“And then to have those who were protesting compared as the moral equivalent to those people? Folks, this is eating at the fabric of this country. This is wrong,” Biden continued.

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Biden also cited an October speech that Sen. John McCain gave at the same venue as Wednesday's event, The National Constitution Center, in which the Arizona senator slammed “half-baked, spurious nationalism” — comments largely seen as a rebuke of Trump. Biden similarly denounced the president’s “phony nationalism” and “spurious” populism.

Biden also pointed to the Democratic Party’s electoral victories Tuesday — which featured wins in two major gubernatorial campaigns in Virginia and New Jersey — as a sign that the public had grown fatigued of the divisive language coming out of the West Wing.

“I think what happened last night, all across the country, including with Republicans, is ‘I’m tired of this,’” Biden said.

Since exiting the White House in January, Biden has repeatedly spoke out against the president’s rhetoric.

“We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation,” Biden warned in an August piece penned for The Atlantic in which he criticized the president’s response to the clashes in Charlottesville earlier that month.

Biden’s remarks came at the end of a discussion with his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, and Axios’ Mike Allen on the future of cancer research, which has become a primary focus for the Bidens.

Joe Biden, who lost his eldest son, Beau Biden, to brain cancer in May 2015, said the fight against the disease was the singular issue that officials of all political stripes could unite around. “There’s one bipartisan issue out there, and there’s many more, but there’s one and that’s the fight against cancer,” he said.

The former vice president recalled the Senate’s decision to rename a portion of the 21st Century Cures Act, a piece of legislation aimed at improving medical innovation that passed through Congress while Biden was still in office, after his son Beau.

It was “a really generous thing to do,” Biden said, citing it as evidence of how the battle to defeat cancer could unite the two major parties.

Biden playfully cautioned lawmakers that if they did not continue to deliver on funding medical research, he might have to get himself back in the political ring.

“I promise you, as somebody once said to me, read my lips, if that doesn’t happen, I’m going to be back down there in the chamber,” he said.

After facing questions on medical research and the White House head on, the Bidens wrapped up the discussion with an artful dodge.

“Would you have beaten Donald Trump?” Allen asked.

“We gotta go,” Jill and Joe Biden said in near unison as they stood up to leave the stage.