welcome back to "politics nation." we are continuing our coverage from columbia, south carolina. we're here at the state's democratic party convention where throughout the day, nearly two dozen presidential candidates made their case in what is a crucial stop in this early voting state. as you can imagine, south

carolina is first in the south primary. it's critical for democratic hopefuls and winning will depend lively on the support from its black community. in just a few moments, vice president joe biden will be right here taking my questions. but right now i want to bring back my panel for discussion, ja. jace s jason johnson is editor for politics.com and we also have atima omara. what do you want to hear from joe biden tonight? he's made statements around segregationists and has been called upon several to apologize. what do you want to hear from him? it doesn't sound like it's affected him tonight. >> it doesn't sound like it's affected him in this room, but

of course it's a lot of his supporters that are here. i would certainly love to hear if he has taken to heart some of the criticisms that were made of him this week. we don't know all the details of the conversation he had with senator booker, but -- >> senator booker was kind of general. >> yeah. so i want to see if he gets it. i mean, some people say it was a gaffe this week. i don't actually necessarily think it was a gaffe. i think this is part of a larger campaign he's always had from the beginning which is a return to normalcy which is really tailored toward an older demographic of predominantly white voters who are thinking of a time when we sort of compromise, we sort of talked about a lot of issues and worked with republicans across the aisle, and that's the sort of era that we're not in anymore. anyone in politics for the last few years will know we can't get anything done with republicans because they don't want to work with us. so he, by bringing up and

speaking fondly of segregationists like he did which weren't even across aisle, they're actually thin the democratic party, he sounded like he was fantasizing this saying, he never called me boy, he called me son. of course he didn't because you were white. so some recognition of that is what i would like to hear. >> what would you like to hear, jason? >> i would like to hear some effort. i heard a lot of passion from senator booker, warren, harris. what i heard was a guy reading from a speech because he's got a 15 to 20-point lead. the core issue i've always had with the biden campaign, not that he's not qualified, that's not the issue. he's running under this underlying issue of, i'm a white guy and i can go into a racial room and get things done. there is no indication that works anymore. so outside of i'm a white guy and i used to work for barack obama, what is your actual vision for america, because the america you're trying to return us to doesn't exist anymore.

that's what i want to see from joe biden. >> many people are saying, and i'm playing devil's advocate here, though the devil doesn't need an advocate where i come from, but the -- many people are saying it's about who can beat donald trump. >> right. >> and we're not looking for a perfect candidate, we're looking for a winning candidate. how do you respond? >> i always say this is my main theme. there is a difference between being viable, which is win your nomination, and being electable, you can win a general election. you can't beat donald trump if you can't create a coalition within your own party. so people who are voting for someone because they think they can beat donald trump, any of the five or six candidates, is side for mayor pete, can beat joe biden. >> atima? >> i 100% agree with that. none of the candidates here, they're all human. they're not perfect. there are things you could pick out on each one of them that they could posititentially do

better. pretty much under the age of 45. i talk to anybody working in the digital universe, the demographic are 50 and up. he knows those are the folks he wants to talk to specifically, predominantly white, who are much more for giving the african-american voter on some things he said were fond at the time of the wing man, of president obama, and voters are interested in structural change, they're interested in aggressive policies, someone who stands on principle and puts forward plans. that is for him not what he's been doing this entire time. >> all right. we're going to take a break here. i want to replay part of the speech by -- i want to play a part of the speech by former vice president joe biden moments ago. >> my time is running, i'm sorry. hey, thank you, everybody. i never like to cut off cheers

but my time is running here. welcome, south carolina, to hear from all of us and we're happy to be here. the only thing i miss is my buddy fritz hocollins. he was my mentor and i'm sorry he's not here. you know this is more important than any campaign you've been engaged in. we have a president who embraces white supremacy, embraces dictators. in fact, goes around the world weakening our alliances. and look, our children are watching. they're watching. it matters what presidents say and do. barack obama they watched and they emulated. they wanted to be like him. four more years of donald trump will permanently change the character of this country. we can't let that happen. we have to beat donald trump as the overwhelming parody we have. we have to rebuild the backbone of this nation.

hard-working people, middle class people. ladies and gentlemen, wall street did not build america. you built america. average people getting a chance build america. and right now from the bottom coming out of the middle class, made worse by trump tax cuts, the top 1.1% let alone 1%. it's time we started to reward work over wealth. we need big and bold ideas, and folks, on day one, on day one i will move to eliminate trump's tax cuts as well for the super wealthy and literally cut by close to 400 to $500 billion the tax loopholes built in that have no social redeeming value and put that money to good use. health care! >> joining me now for his first cable news sit-down interview since announcing his white house

bid is former vice president joe biden. thank you for being with us tonight. >> good to see you, rev. >> good to see you. let me ask you before we get into some of what you said in the speech, the president announced today that he's going to have a two-week delay on his announcement that he was sending i.c.e. in after hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. nancy pelosi called him last night and asked him not to do it. he's going to do a two-week delay. what's your reaction? >> he shouldn't do it at all. you see they're in the ninth circuit right now arguing that kids who are being detained by i.c.e. should not even have blankets, toothbrushes and the rest, they can sleep on floors. they're actually making that argument today. and not only is that cruel, but imagine what it says to the rest of the world about who we are. look, we should immediately let the d.r.e.a.m.ers in, period. we should be moovving in the direction to make sure there is a path for citizenship for those

who are whehere. we should change fundamentally the access to -- in terms of asylum by putting more judges on the border. we should not be getting rid of my $750 billion proposal that we put together bipartisan in the administration that provides money for el salvador, guatemala in order to change the environment while they're there, improve their education and have a real criminal justice system, et cetera. these are things we should be doing. look, you come from a state that has a big old statue. it says, send me your -- and it goes on. that's who we are. that's who we are. this is absolutely mindless what he's doing. >> i heard in your speech, you got into detail about how to deal with the tax code and what it would do in terms of money, which means a lot, particularly in a state like south carolina, a huge black population, a

population that needs jobs, infrastructure development. why is this so critical to you and will this be a machb thein ? >> it's a gigantic theme. we're the eighth largest black population in america. i know those communities. they're getting killed and the environmental stuff, all the bad stuff is happening. they have wooden pipes that are in fact leaking as the headline in the south carolina paper said today, like tissue paper. what's going on here? they're the ones with the refineries built next to them where the smog is occurring, where all this stuff is dropping. here's the deal. as we strengthen the african-american community throughout this country, bwhat e do, we not only make it better for them, we make it better for all of america. for those who are cynical about this, i want to point out billions of dollars in the process. billions of dollars.

look, rev, we can do this. i'm not making these numbers up. mine are not let's make everything free for everybody all the time. we can send everybody to community college for free, cutting in half the cost of college by just adding $6 billion to our budget. of the trillion $600 billion in loopholes, it's only $17 billion. you can change it all. we should be making sure that the corporate tax is 28%, not what when it was too hyatt 20-some. but 28%? look at all the corporations paying zero federal tax. this is within our wheelhouse. it's really within our wheelhouse. >> criminal justice reform. you spoke about martin luther king iii and you talked about how you had one position in '94 with the crime bill and you felt

differently but you spoke at the time when many black voters were there and you want to see the system work differently now. tell us about that. >> the black caucus voted for the majority. the only people against it were republicans because it had $9 billion in there for prevention. it had drug courts which i call for $400 million to divert people from prison. but things have changed. things have changed. what we should be doing is what barack and i started in our administration. there are 32 million people in the federal prison system. you have almost 1,800,000 people in federal and state prisons. you have less than 200,000. it doesn't mean 2 million in federal prisons. we should reduce that population. no one should go to jail for a drug offense. they should go to rehabilitation. that's the smartest thing for them. when people get out of jail, the idea we give them $25 and a bus

ticket to go under a bridge but they don't qualify for public housing, they don't qualify for food, they don't qualify for pell grants. that's crazy. we should be doing the opposite. you know, rev, i've been calling for it and i've been calling for it for a long time, there should be job training in prisons, not training on how to be criminals. there is so much to do and it's within our capacity to do it. that's the interesting thing. i think what's happening now is i think donald trump may have reawake understaned sensibilitis country to say, whoa, maybe we can do this now. just as our generation was awakened when dr. king and dr. bobby kennedy were assassinated. these millennials, they get it. and now they want to get engaged. >> you started the campaign with a video talking about charlottesville and the division in the country, and i watched you close up during the obama years fight, even sometimes internal fights in the staff for

same-sex marriage and a lot of tough stuff. you and i disagreed in the '90s, and i said, wow, this biden is a real go to the mat kind of fighter. this week you got into it about a statement you made about racists and segregations. don't you understand some of the hurt feelings that you caused cory booker and you had mayor de blasio and others calling on you to apologize. many things i've said that i didn't intend -- mrs. king said to me, you can't say things that hurt people. it hurts when you talk about boy. it means something different to us. >> it does. >> it hurts when you call a racist like you normalize it. that's not the biden i got to know, don't you understand that? >> i do fully understand. that's not what i said, though. they didn't print the whole deal, you know what i mean? the context of this was totally different. and by the way, the fact of the matter is i ran against all those folks. i got on the judiciary committee to defeat the man ahead of the committee. i'm the guy who extended the

voting rights act 25 years, not five. we finally got to the point when i was a senior member on the judiciary committee to get 98 votes to accident tend the voting rights act. let me tell you something, you got to deal with what's in front of you. what's in front of you are a bunch of racists and we had to defeat them. i said in that statement that the fact of the matter is, the meanest man in the world i've ever dealt with in the united states senate was a guy from georgia named herman talmage and i included jim eastland. i do understand the consequence of the word "boy." but it wasn't said in any of that context at all. >> but you understand, they would never call me "son." >> no, but they call teddy kennedy "boy." the reason they call me senator -- i mean, "son" because he said i'm not even qualified

to be in the senate. i'm not old enough. i'm a kid. >> to those that are listening, and those that have respected you or that were hurt by that, what do you say to them? i've heard your justification and you're explaining it, but you're saying to them you understand the feeling. >> i do understand the feeling. look, as you know, rev, you know about me in delaware. i came up in that community. i came up in the black church. i came up because that's where we sit down to organize to go out and march. i was the only white employee on the east side of wilmington, delaware in terms of being a lifeguard and a park director. because i chose to be there and i learned more there than anywhere of all of those folks that got good jobs were athletes. i was not a bad oot leet but i was the only white employee. the fact of the matter is, i remember sitting in there and a guy named jamie roles is a good athlete. he said, do you have a jerry can, joe? you mean a big 5-gallon one?

yeah. what do you need a jerry can for? i can't stop and get a jerry can. i didn't have it anywhere near as tough as any black man or woman i sesrved with, but all te people -- i think there were a total of 14 african-americans and me. i was in the middle of a city and i didn't know anybody white. they would ask questions like, what's did like for a, b, c or d? i am fully aware of that. and to the extent that anybody thought that i meant something different, that is not what i intended. and it would be wrong for anybody to intend that. >> iran, i have to ask you about that before i let you go. the whole back and forth with this president sending out one

signal -- i mean, actually having people in the air headed that way, then he pulls back and he tells this story that he heard 150 people would die and he decided not to do it, how do you react to his story, because some people are saying the story is unbelievable, and how do you react to the seemingly no policy. we don't even have a secretary of defense. >> look, as you know, i served as chairman of the foreign relations committee a long time. i met virtually every major world leader in the last 35 years and met them on their first name basis. some are absolute tyrants like putin and others that he embraces. but i also sat on the intelligence committee and i also was, as you know, did a major piece of intelligence operations for president of the united states when i was there. if, in fact, the military did not brief him and vet him on

what was happening, i just don't believe it. the military doesn't do that. they sit down and say, mr. president, do you want us to do "a"? here's what we think will happen. this is the consequence. your decision, mr. president, we recommend or not. but the idea that they would say to him when he said, go ahead and bomb and take out whatever they were going to take out and not tell him what the consequences would be, not possible. simply not possible. the military does not function that way whether or not there is a secretary of defense. >> wow. all right. >> i really mean it. not a joke, rev. not possible. >> thank you for coming by. thank you for this first sit-down interview on cable tv news. you and i can always talk blunt and frank, and you always make me listen to you. >> i've always listened to you. you know that, man. you've done a lot more than i've done for the civil movement.

we owe you, pal. >> vice president joe biden. [ cheers and applause ] >> we'll have much more -- we'll have much more when "politics nation" continues right after the break. we'll be right back. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ applebee's new loaded chicken fajitas. now only $10.99.

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i know that we have in this white house a president who says he wants to make america great again. what does that mean? does that mean he wants to take us back to before schools were integrated? does that mean he wants to take us back before the voting rights act was enacted? does that mean he wants to take us back before the civil right act was enacted? does he mean he wants to take us back before roe v. wade was enacted? because we're not going back! >> be part of this fight. this is our chance in 2020.

our chance to dream big, to fight hard, and to win! >> i am sick of the word "values" being talked about like it only belongs on one side of the aisle. values like freedom and security and democracy are not conservative values, they are american values. and this is the year we break the republican monopoly on talking about freedom. >> welcome back to "politics nation." we are continuing our coverage from columbia, south carolina in the state's democratic party convention. joining me now is john hyneman, analyst for msnbc, and back with me, jason johnson, politics editor and amita omara,

democratic strategist. what did you think of biden's interview? he dealt with iran, he dealt with the i.c.e. situation, and i tried to explain to him how hurt some of us that even had worked with him and liked him was on his "oh boy" comment. >> the one conclusion that can be reached at the end of this week in which there was a lot of controversy around this topic and it was a forefront here in south carolina. a lot of discussion about it in the halls, a lot of people talking about it. joe biden is not apologizing and you gave him another opportunity. specifically, i think a lot of people -- >> i even referred to mrs. king apprising me. >> i think a lot of people, as this thing has played out over some days, a lot of people have tried to break up the controversy into different pieces. the part that i think now lingers is the part that you focused on, rev, which is the part about this invocation of "son" and "boy" and what was missed by that. the thing that cory booker tried

to make a teachable moment in the course of the week. my impression of the way he talked about it in this way, he does not see it with a lot of clarity, i don't think, and he certainly is taking the posture he's not going to apologize tore my pa -- for any part of it. the segregation comment was taken out of context and i thought the answer was not very clear or clean. he made a reference to kennedy and to how kennedy was called "boy" -- >> that's why i said they wouldn't call me "son." >> i didn't understand it, so i thought you gave him a chance to very cleanly say that he had misspoken or that he had to apologize at least for having hurt feelings to people and caused people emotional distress over that. he did not do that -- this far into this controversy, i thought he would have been ready for that question and to put it to bed in a clean way, and i don't think he did. >> jason, i even came back and

said, what would you say to people who were offended as i was. i think, again -- and would really, i think, we're dealing with politically here is we don't want to feel like we already have a president that never admits any wrong. >> yes. >> i even said, i've said things i shouldn't have said. mrs. corretta scott king said, you can't talk like that. i'm giving you every opportunity to be the biden i thought you were when we worked with mr. obama and he chose to answer the way he answered. >> rev, this is the key thing, because you know vice president biden, you've worked with him, so it hurts you because you also worked with him and know what he's like on the inside. i don't know the guy. so we're not hurt, we're annoyed, and we're getting an impression -- insulted. we're getting the impression this is a guy who wouldn't apologize about the crime bill. we're getting a guy who doesn't see himself racially offensive by a lot of people which makes

us wonder about what kind of policies he would engage in. this looks like a guy who is stuck in their ways and can't say they're sorry, can't recognize that their implications have policy indications that worry voters. this is about some basic stuff about can you negotiate as a politician, and he is making people question that even though he served with obama for eight years. >> i would just say very simply i think the theme is here regardless of intent, it's the impact, right? and he's missing that point. your intention may not have been to hurt someone's feelings, but when you hurt someone's feelings, then apologize, then acknowledge, okay, i could do better. and he is stuck in sort of this state where they kind of talk a little bit about, like, the white fragility perspective, which is, well, i don't understand why everybody is upset. that wasn't my intent, that wasn't my intent. just listen to what people are saying about what has actually

happened this week. you talked about almost ro manhatt manticizing a time when he worked with them. >> but this is an anti-segregation -- >> this was about anti-bussing. >> he was against bussing as well. >> on this controversy, which i think we've had a previous discussion with biden where this notion that there is a big cleavage in the democratic party with people who say trump is the problem. when trump goes away, we can work with republicans versus people who say trump isn't the problem, he's the decision. to hear biden say, inpenndepend

of other things we talked about, where people were civil and today you can't get anything done, and the question people have asked all week long is these are the good old days when things were civil. for whom? maybe the good old days for some people, certainly white people, but i don't know what african-american will look back on those days and say, that's when things were civil and things got done to my benefit, they were not. i think there are a number of problems that have to do with temperamental questions, do you acknowledge when you make a mistake or do you dig in like trump does? are there policy issues that are on the table? we're now going to have, i think, a thorough discussion on joe biden's legacy on crime and criminal justice and on the crime bill. on the disparity between crack and powder cocaine. on the death penalty, because i believe he's the only democrat who today i believe his position

is he's for the death penalty. he was adamant about pro-death penalty as senator for some time. so we'll have that discussion and we'll have this other discussion about can you work with republicans at all in the republican party currently constituted and what is your vision for how that happens? those are all big discussions. >> but as far as the mistakes he's making, like mitch mcconnell, if he becomes the president tomorrow, mitch mcconnell says, i'm not going to give you support, either. so joe biden tries to build a coalition within the democratic party. he's got eight to ten mornths, but you've got to be able to show that you can push policy in some decorative ways, because his fantasy that he can work with these guys, that they'll all sit in a room in 2020, like

hey, guys, let's get it done, that's not going to happen. >> for me one of the things that has been continuously frustrating is he always talks about compromise, compromise, compromise. it's like somehow he got stuck in the '90s and his brain hasn't moved guard in that time frame. nothing has been done, to your point, since democrats took over the u.s. senate. a lot of times we talk about compromise, it was compromise on abortion, we passed the hyde amendment because, all right, we can't stop, like, rich women from having abortions so we'll stop poor women which is essentially women of color. he was in the senate when hyde made the case. that's why he wanted the hyde amendment passed. these are things he knows, right? so it's frustrating to hear someone who compromises on lbgt rights, compromises on millennial americans. now we have geneseers who are a

large block. you are all individuals who thought all this stuff, so we can sit in the generation now and say, you know what? we don't have to put up with it anymore. >> there are certain things i find puzzling about it, because joe biden was barack obama's vice president, and this is not ancient history like back in the old days. in the eight years in which joe biden was in the white houseworking alongsihousework ing -- house, working alongside barack obama, he took a lot of shots. >> that's right, he took a lot of shots. and barack obama said it could have been me. he was not hedging on that which is a whole distance away from saying that talmadge and them were civility. >> civility does not mean

humanitarian, civility does not mean justice, it just means people are not yelling at each other. joe biden has to understand that the credibility he grew with barack obama was temporary. he can't put on an obama mask for the next eight months and hope he can put that coalition together with the same amount of passion. he has to build his own name, just like hillary clinton had to build her own name, and when she failed to do that, she also lost. >> what are the politics of this? can this significantly arm him with black voters or voters in engine, or is this something he can get past? >> i think this instance is something he will move past, and you'll start to see when we focus on some of the problems mayor pete is having in south bend right now, also of a racial cast. >> for those who don't know, a white officer killed a black -- >> eric logan. >> -- eric logan in south bend

where mayor pete is the mayor. >> and he's been in south bend trying to deal with it and not doing a particularly good job of the there is video showing lots of resistance of his leadership -- >> including his family. i spoke to them and the issue there was the officer had on a body camera which was turned off. which is part of bha what we ar during the obama administration. why have body cameras if they can turn them off? >> to come back to your question, i think this particular incident is not going to cause a mass ive hemorrhagin of support for him or anyone else, but i do believe it's opening up a conversation over the issues in the coming months. you're going to have discussions around crime, discussions around a lot of other policies where

biden's temperament and some of his policies are out of step with a lot of what the activists and the core of the democratic base is. i would say if i just went around this room, i would say typical to today, joe biden is going to have intensive speeches. you is a kamala harris, amy klobuchar, cory booker turn in strong speeches today. joe biden was across the street at a planned parenthood event where the women were not particularly impressed. i think joe biden's strong arm was a firewall. if you look at the action here in the last 24 hours, i think that firewall will be under assault by a lot of candidates who think, we can go head to head with joe biden here.

>> what joe biden has done this week, it's like a basketball team that keeps the other team hanging around in the fourth quart quarter. what has he done for cory booker this week? cory booker was nowhere a week ago. now cory booker is speaking of power. this is the kind of thing that joe biden does by making these unforced errors. he's letting other people into the game when he should be shutting people out so he's only wearing about five or six people. >> i think this is his strategy. i think he's not interested in having conversations in the democratic party base because he's running a campaign like he's already the democratic candidate. he wants to talk toie electrl to electricity -- electorates

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i have always believed that good public policy is good politics. and good public policy is to understand that in the richest country in the history of the world, all of our people are retired to economic, racial, social and environmental justice and that in america we need an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just wealthy campaign in the 1%. >> welcome back to "politics nation" in columbia, south carolina. earlier today i interviewed senator bernie sanders. take a listen. what are you saying specifically in terms of policies that would say to the black community and to the broader community that

would bring us together in terms of equality, not just playing the one audience against another. >> we aren't playing. when we talk about raising the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour, you're talking to all low-income workers in america, predominantly african-american and latino. when we talk about making public colleges and universities free and substantially reducing student debt, americans, primarily minorities. when we talk about health care, the minority community is being hurt by health care. we want to address those issues, but we're also going to make sure we have more black doctors, more black nurses, more black social workers because people feel that inequity. >> when i asked you about socialism, you said there was nothing wrong with socialism.

is that what distinguishes you? >> let me just say this. every other major country on earth guarantees health care to all people as a human right. i live 15 miles away from canada. not exactly what you would call a socialist country. you can go to any doctor you want, any hospital you want. they end up spending 15% less than we do. the prescription drugs cost is much, much lower. so the time is long overdue for us to have the courage to take on the pharmaceutical industry that rips us off every day, to take on the insurance companies and do what every other company does, make health care a right, run it on a non-profit basis. medicare right now is a good program but let's expand it to all americans. >> but do you feel republicans will try to use the socialism tag that if you're the nominee, do you think they will try to use that for a lot of centrist

voters? >> of course they will. >> back with me, john hydeman, jason johnson and atima omara. when we talk about these issues, they call it the asylum generation ahead of me, which jesse jackson and that crowd was the generation, the x generation and the millennials all had this fight. socialism or capitalism, how we provide, how we don't, who is accommodating, who is not. and it always is amazing to me that every generation acts like it just started with their generation. these debates are nothing new. having said that, having as many as 24 people running now of different generations, you now are seeing it all displayed on one stage. i think some people are thinking

it's generational when it happens all the time, but this is the first time we're seeing such a wide range of people from different generations, genders and races on the same stage running. 24 people. when i ran in '04, there was maybe eight people running. >> i think one of the interesting things now is in the last 10 years, millennials have come of age. everybody still refers to us like i'm in my 20s. i'm in my mid to late 30s and you have other generations as well. we are thinking about politics, we're thinking of running for office. especially when you look at who is in the public office, you think, oh, i might not be taken seriously. my husband is a gen-xer. he says, you know what, they're trying to get their moment in the sun. republicans have done better on that. so i think this generation more

so than anything, having formerly been with the democrats of america, look at a different way of approaching things because the deal has set up in the last 30 years politically just haven't panned out for us. we came out of one of the biggest recessions, the wait was stagnating. we talked to individuals who said, oh, yeah, when i got out of college i had this $10,000 loan debt and i was able to pay it off. now we're talking six figures of student loans. it used to be easy to buy a quarter and now it's going up a couple million. so we're looking at a promise that allows us to be able to enjoy the things that previous generations have. >> what i'm saying, though, is we had a bad deal, and we had to fight for it, which i think is

healthy. i think we can't be satisfied, john. >> sure. there are a lot of debates and there have been for a long time. what is fascinating is in the history of post-war or post-world war ii america, we have not had an active debate about socialism and what it means and whether it's appropriate to -- really, for 50 years. the last time, generally, you had a really aggressive public debate over the possibility of socialism, where democratic socialism is going back to pre-world war ii. i think it does speak to the depth of the eco anxiety, even in the face of a trump economy which on the surface seems to be doing pretty well that, this 30 years of economic stagnation of flat living standards, of wages not going up, of globalization, of the technology revolution, of the fear of automation, of the fact that so many families now

over the course, because of 30 years of stagnation, are feeling as though some kind of fundamental change is required to combat the large-scale changes at the tectonic level of the economy. suddenly people are open to these old ideas that have become new again, and what's fat fascinating about it is joe biden and the place you find the most supporters is among young dem graographic voters. >> he gets the young voters and i'm like 12 or 13 years older. thank you. we'll have more after the break. this is "politics nation" from south carolina. nation" from south carolina ♪

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correspondent mike memoly and garrett haake. you said there's an opportunity here. >> sure. >> that he can say yeah, i can make mistakes, unlike the sitting president, and i did everything back to the admonition to say, yes, you can make a mistake. we all have in public life. your reaction? >> the knock on joe biden is he is an old dog. the opportunity to prove that you can learn new tricks if you're his campaign, you can see this this as an opportunity to come out and say even i, who've been doing this, you could double down on his record and saying i've been doing this for 40 years and been a champion of civil rights could still have more to learn and they didn't go this path. they have said they don't think this is fatal, they don't think joe biden is a racist, they don't think he means any harm by

, this bthis work this, but he ought to apology. >> the boy thing, the boy thing the senator from new jersey to apologize, that was offensive to me. and i'm saying that as somebody that worked with him and learned to respect him. we argued in the '90s on the krie crime bill. we've come together and that's what i was trying to say. >> you gave him every opportunity in a tough interview to make this right, to address the issue and a lot of the complaints, concerns that a lot of people have raised. he didn't do it. i was reminded of the interview he did as a candidate just after announcing where he was on "the view" and the hosts gave him every opportunity to address that and apologize, but he wouldn't do it. vice president is proud of his record and is not willing to go there.

one of the things cory booker hit on this week that potentially touches a nerve with democrats in what is otherwise a strong position, he's like donald trump, he won't apologize. that's vice president needs to deal with going forward. >> his position on iran, did you feel he made news there, a new wave in terms of his positions on things? >> i think he has unique credibility in talk about these issues because he's been the guy in the room. >> no doubt about that. >> his position on iran isn't substantively different in any major way, but when he criticizes the president of the united states for not listening to advice or misinterpreting it, he has a credibility that other candidates don't because he's sat in the room. >> when he says it's impossible for the president to not have been told the lives that were at risk and he says that's just impossible. >> the other candidates could criticize him on this. joe biden has sat in the situation room with the president of the united states. he understands what a military

briefing about this kind of operation would look like, what all the contingencies are. i know the pentagon told him this and the president is lying what he told chuck todd the other day. >> what do you make of this two-week delay. now nancy pelosi can call donald trump and he decides he's going to give a delay to see if republicans and democrats can work together? i mean, that seems like an odd kind of position for donald trump to take. >> except it's a classic trumpian tactic. this is a tactic this president has complied again and again to lay out incredibly drastic step he's going to take and it's going to happen right now and at the last minute changes his mind and be the guy who saves the guy from the crisis he created himself. >> they call it bullying in brooklyn and queens where he and i come from. me, brooklyn, by the way. >> garrett and i spent a lot of time on capitol hill. they're not passing immigration reform in the next two weeks. they have a full plate and they're not doing the basics as

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and then right after that biden sat down with reverend al sharpton, the first interview of his candidacy so far. >> you started the campaign with a video talking about charlottesville and the division in the country. i watched you close up during the obama years fight even sometimes internal fights in the staff for same-sex marriage and a lot of tough stuff. you and i disagreed in the '90s and i said, wow, this biden is a real go to the mat kind of fighter. and this week you got into it about a statement you made about races and segregationists. don't you understand some of the hurt feelings there? >> sure i do. >> you cal