| September 07, 2019 12:32 PM
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Former Vice President Joe Biden fell into a near-coughing fit and called President Trump “President Hump” during his address to the New Hampshire Democratic Party Convention Saturday morning.
The sporadic coughs came between remarks the former vice president made criticizing President Trump over the administration’s immigration policies.
"We have 330 million Americans that have to do what this president can't do, stand together and stand up against this god-awful situation we face with him as president. Stand up for our best, what our nation believes," he said. "We believe in honesty, decency, treating everyone with dignity and respect, giving everyone a fair shot and leaving no one behind. And giving hate no safe harbor. Demonizing no one — not the poor, the powerless, the immigrant, the other (cough) and maybe most importantly, leading, not by the example of our power but by the power of our example as we always have."
He continued, “Being part of something bigger than ourselves. It's a code. It's been the American code. It's who we are, and President Trump does not get it (cough). America is an idea (cough,) an idea that is stronger than any army. Bigger than any ocean and more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It gives hope to the hopeless. And not only our values under attack, our very democracy is. We've now learned nothing is guaranteed about democracy.”
He added, “We have to earn it. We have to protect it. We have to fight for it. The most powerful (cough) … the most powerful idea in the history of the world beats in the heart of the people in this country.”
Biden later jumbled a couple of words when he pleaded with fellow Democrats that they cannot allow for Trump to be reelected.
He explained, “I believe history will look back at this presidency as an aberrant moment in time. But if ‘Donald Hump’ ... Donald Trump is reelected — Freudian slip. If Donald Trump is reelected, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation.”
When Biden attempted to add that Trump posed an “existential” threat to the nation, he struggled to pronounce the word and went on to say, “It's not hypothetical, his threat to this nation.”