Name: Senator Joe Biden Is Ready To "Get Up" | Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-06-28T22:00:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Senator Joe Biden Is Ready To "Get Up" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Senator Joe Biden Is Ready To "Get Up" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-28. Transcript available.

our next guest is a six-term senator now running as democratic candidate for
president this is his
new book entitled promises to keep please welcome your senator from the great
state of delaware
senator joe biden i uh just caught a glimpse of the two of us walking back to
the area here and
i thought wow this would be a wonderful ticket you and me i think i'd be happy
to be your
vice president how great we look i'll tell you what no no maybe you could
finance our campaign
i'll take care i'll do whatever i can hey i got that on me now listen but i but
i would like to be
the the vice president and and i would be the guy that would offer to resign
when stuff went ugly
oh no okay fine i'll quit and then i'll leave what do you mean you're not banding
like cheney
no uh now you know what i was uh i didn't realize that when you were first
elected uh senator from
delaware uh you were 29 years old that's right and and you have to be 30 to
actually take the office
is that right that's correct yeah what what was it like i mean you're a kid at
29 for gosh sakes what
was that like uh walking into the great senate chamber at 29 years old you know
i walked in when
i was 21 and i got arrested i was it was a saturday i was down visiting some
friends at georgetown
university and uh i came up on a saturday morning because i was fascinated with
the senate and they had
a saturday session i walked up those days no guards stopping everywhere and i
and they just got out of
session i walked in the back all of a sudden i found myself in the chamber and
i was stunned i walked
up sat down the presiding officer's seat guy grabbed me by the shoulder said
you're under arrest
literally nine years later as i walked down to the senate floor through the
same door
that same guy cop said to me senator you remember me and i said geez i don't he
said i arrested you
nine years ago wow how about that he said welcome back welcome back welcome
back what was it um
i i i think any first time senator has got to be intimidated somewhat but to be
a 29 30 year old
senator the the intimidation was it did it was it palpable did you feel it what
what was it like i did
but i i got there kind of under lousy circumstances uh i think i would have
been genuinely intimidated
instead when i went down there i almost had a chip on my shoulder right right
after i got elected i got
elected november 7th and december 18th that year before i was sworn in my wife
and daughter were killed
in an automobile accident my my two sons were pretty banged up and i didn't
have any plans on going down i
had talked to our governor to appoint someone to my spot and senator mansfield
wonderful guy got me to go
down and said just give me six months that was 34 years ago and um and so uh so
i started off uh just
in a bad mood and um and uh but once i got there and started to get involved
and realized just where
i was it was there were two two occasions when i was felt very intimidated in
the beginning uh um one
was we went to i went to speak with uh i was on the senate foreign relations
committee that was a big deal
for a young person young was anything other than 65. uh and uh you all think i'm
kidding i'm not
uh and uh um and so i went into this meeting that henry kissinger was a witness
who was called he
was briefing us his world view and i was late to the meeting i went to the
wrong room and i came into
the door this small relatively small room and the door handle slipped out of my
hand and banged against
these filing cabinets and about nine elderly guys had coronary arrest and i
literally found myself
upon the back of henry kissinger and ended up sitting down in the only open
seat making me the
second ranking member of the committee and things went from bad to worse and
finally got my turn to ask
a question and uh senator mansfield said any other questions i said yes sir and
i had worked up as my
senatorial voice i was going to ask this tough question i said dr kissinger and
kissinger ignored me
completely looked at the leader and said mr leader he said i was under the
impression no staff was
allowed in these meetings uh things went from bad to worse i said uh and then
the assistant secretary
of state handed him a piece of paper i said biden delaware he said oh senator
biddon i'm so sorry
and i said secretary dulles it's not a problem we're getting on very well
things went all downhill from
there you know what i mean now you uh you mentioned uh in passing and i
certainly know that that's not
what it represents in your life but how how were you able to keep going uh
after your family is devastated
that way was it just a matter of kind of sleepwalking one foot in front of
another just watching the days
go by my uh my dad god love him had an expression his whole life he'd say uh
you know you'd you'd have
a bad day and he'd say get up you get knocked down on the football field get up
anything that happened
the refrain was get up and it was sort of getting up it reminded me of uh when
i played uh football in
high school a little bit in college you you know you had to do these wind sprints
and the only way i could
do 20 wind sprints say one more one more and i i consciously at the time and i'm
sure a lot of
people out here have gone through things similar or worse than i did and what
you do is you just get
up and just get up and go through that day but i had a real incentive i had two
young boys to raise and
i went home every night i still do and uh and everybody thought god isn't that
nice he's going home
he's being responsible for the hell i needed to go home for for me uh with them
so that that was just get
up you just you just do it how old were your boys when they lost their mother
they were four and five
not not quite four not quite five and um but look uh you know i i was really
lucky i have a sister
who's incredible we have an expression in my family if you have to ask it's too
late um and my sister
literally she and her husband gave up their apartment when i got home from the
hospital i wasn't in the
accident when i got home from the hospital um she had already moved into the
movement of the house and
five years later got lucky got married and came home and she moved out i mean
it was a
pretty nice of her wasn't it let's talk about this is your uh this is your
second run for the
white house is that correct first was auspicious the first one was was uh i
remember in the in the 60s
in the 60s it was it was derailed well maybe it wasn't derailed but i remember
this uh uh quoting uh
passage from the gettysburg address and and there was no attribution to lincoln
was was that the
episode well that was the essence i uh i quoted um uh a fellow named neil kinnick
who was a labor
party leader in great britain running for prime minister and i quoted him all
the time but this
time i didn't quote him i just it was just i just screwed up i made a mistake
and one of the other
campaigns that said gave me a sharp elbow and then i became biden the plagiarizer
biden the guy who
didn't and look i mean i wasn't i don't think you know at the time that you
would admit there's an
oversight no no it was flat flat mistake on my part and uh and um you know you
one of the things is
you uh it actually is probably a good thing that happened to me i know that
sounds strange i wish it
didn't happen the way it did but um shortly after i got out i ended up with two
cranial aneurysms and
uh given a relatively uh not a great chance of living uh you've been through
some life-threatening
operations and uh you know talking about the first part of the show
well let me tell you it's not as bad as me i i flew up on u.s air
but anyway it's so it had nothing to do with lincoln and nothing to do with the
gettysburg address
no but it's the same principle though same principle man i tell you it would
have been harder if that
way so but but now uh what do you how do you like your chances now for the
white house i think my
chances are good i have no money i have no obligations i have no support no i
uh i think they're really
good look i think as long as as the single central issue facing the country is
national security the war in
iraq terrorism as long as that's the case and as long as i can raise which i
think i can 20 to 25
million dollars not 100 million like others are raising um i'm in the game i i
think i am i
we all do i guess i think i'm the most qualified person for at this moment in
our history and why
does a person even want this job now because whoever gets it really is inheriting
quite a quite a mess
you know dave if you if you ever wanted to be president this is the time to be
president because
you literally have a chance that only occurs about every 60 70 years in
american history you got a
chance to literally change the direction of the world and if we keep going the
direction we're going
we're we're in real trouble and the rest of the world i know most of these
other world leaders not
because i'm important i just been hanging around a long time i've gone to
meetings of them when they
were young parliamentarians and now running their countries and they're
desperately looking for somebody
who uh um who who can reestablish america's place in the world uh and i think
it's available i think
the american public is ready to do great things they're not afraid of any of
these challenges
how's your health now everything good thank you very much for being here this
is the book
joe biden promises to keep have a great campaign thank you very much