Biden on Trump: ‘He would have loved Stalin’ In his first campaign trail appearance with Clinton, Biden rips into Trump's 'very un-American' ideas.

Vice President Joe Biden on Monday ripped into Donald Trump for his overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin, declaring that the Republican nominee “would have loved Stalin.”

At a rally in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden assailed Trump as unfit to be president and slammed his proposals on foreign policy and the military. With Hillary Clinton at his side, Biden criticized the GOP nominee’s repeated warm statements toward Putin and said “Trump's ideas are not only profoundly wrong, they're very dangerous and they’re very un-American.”


“This guy's shame has no limits. He's even gone so far as to ask Putin and Russia to conduct cyberattacks against the United States of America,” Biden said, raising his voice for emphasis over the raucous crowd. “Even if he is joking — which he's not — even if he's joking, what an outrageous thing to say.”

Pointing out his aide who travels with him and carries the U.S. nuclear codes, Biden said Trump is too unstable and lacks the knowledge to be given control over such weapons. The vice president also spoke warmly of his son Beau, a military veteran who went on to serve as Delaware’s attorney general before losing a battle with cancer in 2015. Biden said he would have tried to stop his son from serving if Trump were commander in chief.

“I was proud, my son Beau served for a year in Iraq, came back a highly decorated soldier,” the vice president said. “I must tell you, had Donald Trump been president I would have thrown my body in front of him. No, I really mean it, to keep him from going if the judgment was based on Trump's decision.”

Clinton, on the other hand, "has forgotten more about American foreign policy than Trump and his entire — not exaggerating — his entire team will ever understand," Biden said. He recalled the weekly breakfasts he shared with her when she was secretary of state and said her understanding of America and its place in the world is without rival.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Hillary's been there, she has been tested," he said. "I've been in the room with her, as we jointly have, with the president's leadership, sent some of these killers to the gates of hell."

Biden’s cutting takedown came just minutes before Trump delivered a much-hyped foreign policy speech in which he gave his own prescription for fighting the Islamic State. In her introductory remarks, Clinton took her own preemptive swings at the Manhattan billionaire's proposals for fighting terrorism, which she said have thus far been thin on details.

“Sometimes he says he won't tell anyone what he'll do because he wants to keep his plan, quote, secret," Clinton said. "And then it turns out the secret is, he has no plan.”

The Clinton-Biden tag team also attacked Trump's economic message, which the real estate mogul outlined in a speech last week in Detroit. The former secretary of state attached a nickname to her opponent's tax plan, the "Trump loophole," as she articulated how that plan would benefit very rich Americans like Trump himself while offering no help for the remaining "99.8 percent" of the country.

In his typically folksy delivery style, Biden alternated throughout his speech between casually leaning on his podium and pounding his fists on it for emphasis. He paused at one point when he recognized a family member in the audience, instructing the Secret Service to make sure they were allowed to come see him after the rally because "we're not leaving until I get a hug."

But like Clinton, Biden was also blunt in delivering broadside attacks against Trump's economic proposals. As he compared the two candidates, he asked the crowd "to listen just for a minute. I don’t even want you clap, because I want you to make sure you understand what I know about her."

With the crowd quieted, Biden said Clinton has long understood the struggles of parents and working families. He contrasted that with Trump, pointing to the reality TV star's catch phrase, "you're fired," as evidence that he is out of touch with normal Americans.

"He's trying to tell us he cares about the middle class. Give me a break, and to repeat myself, that's such a bunch of malarkey," Biden said. "It makes no sense. None, none, none, none. This guy doesn't care about the middle class, and I don't even blame him in a sense, because he doesn't understand it. He doesn't have a clue."