Politics

Obama Reunites with Biden for First Time Since the Primary: 'I'm Looking Forward to Working with You'

"The thing I've got confidence in, Joe, is your heart and your character," Obama said

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Published on July 23, 2020 04:14 PM

Barack Obama and Joe Biden, together again ... and six feet apart.

The former president, 58, joined his former vice president, 77, for a socially distanced one-on-one conversation where the duo discussed an array of topics in a 15-minute video posted by Biden's presidential campaign on Thursday.

A source told PEOPLE that the meeting was filmed earlier this month at Obama's office and it's the first time the two physically spent time together in months — since Biden won the Democratic primary this spring.

Praising Biden for his empathy, Obama said, "The thing I've got confidence in, Joe, is your heart and your character and the fact that you are going to be able to reassemble the kind of government that cares about people and brings people together."

He added, "More than anything it's just that basic decency and understanding about what's best in America that I think people are going to be hungry for."

Obama, who is expected to increase his efforts in support of Biden's challenge to President Donald Trump, said: "I'm looking forward to working with you."

(Trump had his own thoughts on the sit-down, tweeting later Thursday: "I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for them. I wouldn’t be President. They did a terrible job!")

Obama endorsed Biden in the 2020 presidential race back in April, once the Democratic primary field had cleared. In a lengthy and impassioned YouTube video then, he praised Biden's leadership and said that Biden was the person who can heal the country amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

"Choosing Joe to be my Vice President was one of the best decisions I ever made,” Obama said in the April video. "And he became a close friend. And I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now."

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"He’s someone who’s own life has taught him how to persevere, how to bounce back when you’ve been knocked down,” Obama added then, before he acknowledged the divide that was present between Democrats over the primary.

"Of course, Democrats may not always agree on every detail of the best way to bring about each and every one of these changes, but we do agree that they’re needed. That only happens if we win this election," Obama said. "Because one thing that everybody has learned by now: The Republicans occupying the White House and running the U.S. Senate are not interested in progress. They’re interested in power."

Elsewhere in their conversation released this week, Biden and Obama discussed the current state of the world, including the push for racial equality amid Black Lives Matter protests happening around the globe.

Obama said that both his daughters and Biden’s granddaughters have participated.

"What we have seen is this extraordinary mobilization across the country of people of every walk of life, every race, every creed who say we're past time to do something about this we understand we're not going to fix it all in one day," he said. "But we're going to take this seriously and we're going to start now."

Obama added, "Policy is important, laws are important, budgets are important — but you know what's important also is: What kind of values are you communicating?"