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Vice President Joe Biden Denies He Called Tea Party American Lawmakers TERRORISTS
I guess we will see if anyone has a tape recording of the caucus meeting.
Vice President Joe Biden tells CBS News that published reports that he compared Tea Party-linked lawmakers to “terrorists” during a closed-door meeting Monday are “absolutely not true.”
“I did not use the terrorism word,” Biden told CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Scott Pelley.
Politico, citing “several sources in the room,” reported Monday afternoon that the vice president, during a closed-door meeting with House Democrats about the deal to raise the debt limit, agreed with an argument by Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, who reportedly asserted that “[w]e have negotiated with terrorists.”
The report said the vice president asserted in response, “They have acted like terrorists.”
Biden told Pelley he let lawmakers “vent” about the deal, which includes spending cuts but may not include revenue increases. (Some liberal House Democrats have vowed not to back the deal.) But he says he did not assert that he agreed with the terrorism comparison.
“What happened was there were some people who said they felt like they were being held hostage by terrorists,” he said. “I never said that they were terrorists or weren’t terrorists, I just let them vent.”
Added Biden: “I said even if that were the case, what’s been happening when you now have taken and paid the debt and move that down so we can now discuss, the nuclear weapon’s been taken out of anyone’s hands.”
OK, until I hear otherwise, I will accept what the Vice President has said. But, what are these comments about a nuclear weapon?
Slow Joe Biden has a habit of shooting off his mouth before his brain does any cognition. I would not be surprised, if he simply blocked out of his head what others have reported.
But, for now….Biden gets a pass.
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Vice President Joe Biden Likens Tea Party Americans to TERRORISTS
Good ol’ Slow Joe Biden put his foot in his mouth again.Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit.
Biden was agreeing with a line of argument made by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) at a two-hour, closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.
“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”
Biden, driven by his Democratic allies’ misgivings about the debt-limit deal, responded: “They have acted like terrorists,” according to several sources in the room.
Biden’s office declined to comment about what the vice president said inside the closed-door session.
Earlier in the day, Biden told Senate Democrats that Republican leaders have “guns to their heads” in trying to negotiate deals.
The vice president’s hot rhetoric about tea party Republicans underscored the tense moment on Capitol Hill as four party leaders in both chambers work to round up the needed votes in an abbreviated time frame. The bill would raise the debt limit by as much as $2.4 trillion through the end of next year and reduce the deficit by an equal amount over the next decade.
Democrats had no shortage of colorful phrases in wake of the deal.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) called it a “Satan sandwich,” and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) called seemed to enjoy the heat analogy, saying: “the Tea Partiers and the GOP have made their slash and burn lunacy clear, and while I do not love this compromise, my vote is a hose to stop the burning. The arsonists must be stopped.
The Vice President of the United States should immediately apologize. This statement is just BULL.
Rep. Mike Doyle should apologize as well.
I thought President Obama and the Democrats called for “CIVILITY” after the Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shooting?