“I’m tired of talking about Trump,” Joe Biden During Town Hall

 

“The next four years I want to make sure all the news is the American people,” the president said

 

Joe Biden is ready for the news cycle to move beyond Donald Trump.

During the president’s CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday evening, Biden quipped that he’s “tired” of talking about his predecessor.

Days after Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial, town hall moderator Anderson Cooper asked Biden if he agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who recently called Republicans that supported the acquittal “cowards.”

“I’m not going to call names out,” Biden told Cooper, per CNN. “Look, for four years all that’s been in the news is Trump. The next four years I want to make sure all the news is the American people.”

“I’m tired of talking about Trump,” he said.

Biden — who dubbed Trump “the former guy” — also told Anderson he had spoken to almost all of the former living presidents.

“All of them, with one exception, picked up the phone and called me as well,” Biden said.

Much of the town hall centered on questions relating to the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. Biden emphasized his recent announcement that the U.S. has secured contracts from both Moderna and Pfizer to deliver an additional 100 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine each by the end of July.

A total of 600 million doses will have been delivered to the U.S. by mid-summer — more than a month earlier than initially anticipated, the president has said.

On Tuesday, Biden expressed hope that the country could be under a “very different circumstance” by Christmastime — if people continue to wear masks, social distance, wash their hands, and get vaccinated when it’s their turn.

When asked by Cooper when the country might be back to normal, Biden said: “It’s a high probability that the vaccinations that are available today — and the new one, Johnson & Johnson, God willing will prove to be useful — that with those vaccinations, the ability to continue to spread the disease is going to diminish considerably because of what they call herd immunity. … By next Christmas I think we’ll be in a very different circumstance, God willing, than we are today.”

“A year from now, I think that there’ll be significantly fewer people having to be socially distanced, have to wear a mask, etc. But we don’t know,” he said, “so I don’t want to over-promise anything here.”

Milwaukee marks Biden’s first official trip as president. In addition to his short stay in Wisconsin, the president will be heading to Michigan on Thursday to visit a Pfizer manufacturing site in Kalamazoo, USA Today reported.