Barack Obama Reunites with Joe Biden for Socially Distanced Campaign Talk During COVID-19
Former Vice President Joe Biden is sitting down with a familiar face (former President Barack Obama) to discuss a familiar topic (President Donald Trump) in a very unfamiliar time.
The Biden campaign on Wednesday released a short clip from the socially distanced chat, which a source says was filmed earlier this month at Obama's office.
The full conversation will be released in full on Thursday.
The video shows the two politicians in black face masks and keeping an appropriate space, in a reflection of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that has upended 2020.
It's the first time the two have physically spent time together in months — since Biden won the Democratic primary this spring, the source says.
The clip also shows them sounding off on Biden's rival, President Trump, whom Biden is challenging in the November election.
Regularly assailed by Trump as "sleepy" and inept, Biden — who maintains a large polling advantage over the Republican incumbent — talks with Obama about Trump's much-scrutinized response to the coronavirus compared to how they would have handled it.
"Can you imagine standing up when you were president and saying, ‘It's not my responsibility. I take no responsibility.' Literally. Literally," Biden, 77, asks Obama near the beginning of the Wednesday clip, referring to something Trump told reporters early on in the pandemic.
"Those words didn't come out of our mouths when we were in office," Obama, 58, replies.
"No. I don't understand his [Trump's] inability to get a sense of what people are going through," Biden says. "He can't relate in any way."
RELATED: Barack Obama Endorses 'My Friend' Joe Biden in 2020 Presidential Race Against Trump
Former President Barack Obama (left) and former Vice President Joe Biden
Wednesday's video, which has been seen more than two million times on social media, comes as Obama is expected to increase his role supporting Biden in the final months of the campaign. ("Doesn’t get much better than sitting down to talk with my friend Joe," he tweeted.)
The former president refrained from backing a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary until the field thinned and it was clear Biden was the voters' choice.
Obama formally endorsed Biden in April, calling Biden a "close friend" and telling voters that his former vice president "has all the qualities we need in a president right now.”
Obama joined Biden for a virtual campaign conversation in June, which ABC News reports helped raise $11 million for the Democratic candidate's campaign.
Voters will decide between Biden and Trump, 74, on Nov. 3.
