Biden Defends Praise for Embattled Republican During Midterms

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Biden had earned $200,000 for an October speaking engagement in Benton Harbor, Michigan, three weeks before the midterm elections. During that speech, Biden gave a glowing commendation to Rep. Fred Upton, a powerful Republican who joined with Biden to increase funding for cancer research and, separately, helped forge legislation to gut the Affordable Care Act.

In Washington Thursday, Biden offered a forceful defense of his supportive remarks about Upton, signaling that he has no intention of blunting his instinct toward bipartisanship and compromise in the event he runs for president. The former vice president has told allies in recent weeks that he is leaning toward running against President Donald Trump in 2020.

“I read in The New York Times today that I — that one of my problems is if I ever run for president, I like Republicans,” Biden said, according to a video posted by the public-affairs network C-Span.

He joked: “OK, well, bless me Father, for I have sinned.”

“Fred Upton, I went out and spoke at an event, and he was there, and I praised him about the fight against cancer,” Biden continued, citing Upton’s role in passing the 21st Century Cures Act. “It mattered, saved people’s lives, and he stepped up, he and three other Republicans stepped up and helped us pass it. So I acknowledged that and now I’m — I don’t know what I am.”

Biden did not mention the speaking fee he received for his trip to Michigan, or address Upton’s role in the drive to repeal the Obama administration’s signature health care law, two dimensions of his Benton Harbor appearance that complicate Biden’s depiction of his remarks as a case study in old-school conciliation.

In a statement published Wednesday, Upton described Biden’s praise for him as a surprise and an “immense honor.”

Biden campaigned widely across the country during the midterm elections and made a particularly strong effort for Democrats in the Midwest, including elsewhere in Michigan.

But in Upton’s district, Biden’s favorable comments were used in Republican advertising in the final weeks of his re-election campaign against Matt Longjohn, a Democrat who was a national YMCA health official. Upton ultimately won re-election by 4 1/2 percentage points, the narrowest margin of his career.

The story describing Biden’s speech to the Economic Club stirred particularly strong criticism of the former vice president among liberal Democrats, who view him as an ideological centrist and distrust his philosophy of aisle-crossing political compromise.

Cynthia Nixon, the actor and activist who challenged Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York from the left in a Democratic primary last year, tweeted a succinct reaction to the report: “WTF?”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.