CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (NBC) – Joe Biden is getting a helping hand in Iowa from someone who knows what it takes to win the caucus.
John Kerry endorsed Biden earlier this week and is appearing with the candidate on three stops Friday.
Kerry won the 2004 caucus and the Democratic presidential nomination before his later service as secretary of state.
“Let me be clear,” Kerry said, “there are terrific public servants in this race who would fight to take the country in the right direction. But I believe more than anyone else Joe can help our country turn the page and that turning of the page begins by knowing you can beat Donald Trump and Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump.”
He extolled Biden’s long experience in foreign affairs, saying those skills are needed now in an unsettled world. Biden said, “We just saw how little respect this president commands from our allies. From our allies, our closest partners. We’ve never ever seen anything like that before, where a president has been mocked and laughed at, not respected, by world leaders, by our allies.”
And Biden tore into Trump’s foreign policy record, claiming America has become a literal laughingstock. He said, “Our adversaries, who once feared to cross us, now see a president they can bamboozle or simply ignore if they flatter him enough. I’m serious. Ordinary people in every nation around the world who once looked to America as a moral beacon, as a nation that stands for universal rights and freedom for all people now sees this president writing love letters to Kim Jong-un, backslapping dictators and autocrats.”
Biden is on day seven of an eight-day bus tour of Iowa, hoping to close the gap on Hawkeye State frontrunners such as Pete Buttigieg.
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