Joe Biden appeared for an almost hour-long interview on Tuesday night’s Late Late Show with James Corden. While some of the interview was light-hearted, the presumptive Democratic nominee did talk a lot about coronavirus and how he would be dealing with the crisis, if he were president:
“First of all, I would take responsibility. This president says I have no responsibility, it’s not my responsibility. Well, who in the hell is it if it’s not the President of the United States’ responsibility? And I would be accountable and I would be transparent about what we’re doing.
Look, it seems to me that the first thing I — and I suggested this a while ago — we should have a supply commander, like a military person who, in a war, has charge of all to have assets that the military needs. Well, we have soldiers in this war, they’re first responders, they’re doctors, people who are on the front lines, they’re nurses, they’re all the people who are stacking grocery shelves, all these incredible people, number one.
Number two, I argue that he should use what they call the create the Defense Production Act that he would be able to say like he finally did with General Motors, I have the authority under this act to make sure you make ventilators for people in hospitals, we don’t have enough of them. He should have done the same thing for the ingredients needed for testing, for gloves, for masks, for gowns, and I would have established — if I were in Congress, I would have moved to establish what they call a pandemic testing board, like F.D.R. did the war production board, to make sure we got all this done, an open enrollment for Obamacare. People are scared to death, and he’s trying to get rid of the only healthcare system we have out there other than Medicare, Medicaid, and, I mean, for people who don’t have insurance.
And I would collect more data. We have to collect hard data on the disproportion to minorities, African-Americans, and Latinos. I would be doing that and most anyone else would be doing that.”
Watch more above.
