Chris Wallace Grills Valerie Biden Owens on Her Brother’s Unity Pledge, Trashing Trump: ‘Not Exactly Lowering the Temperature’

CNN+ host Chris Wallace pressed First Sister and longtime senior campaign official Valerie Biden Owens over President Joe Biden’s inaugural unity pledge, and how her own criticisms of former President Donald Trump fit into that.

Ms. Owens was Wallace’s guest on the latest episode of the CNN+ series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, for an interview that centered around Owens’s new book “Growing Up Biden,” which chronicles her close relationship with President Joe Biden as a family member and a crucial political adviser.

Wallace spent a portion of the interview grilling Ms. Owens about President Biden’s promise, made during his inaugural address, that”We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.”

After playing a clip of that moment, Wallace asked why “that hasn’t happened,” and asked how Owens lambasting Trump in her book fits into her brother’s pledge:

CHRIS WALLACE: But that pledge, that hasn’t happened. Why not?

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS: Well, I think it’s I think it’s happened on Joe’s part, I think Joe’s has certainly been a uniter, or worked his very best to be a uniter. Joe has a characteristic, a quality. It’s called empathy, and empathy … Simply means to feel, not as into, you know, feel as in the fabric, but to feel and to absorb. And it’s the connective tissue with humankind. And unless we have, we develop some empathy and step back and say, “You know what, Chris, I don’t agree with you on anything, or “I don’t agree with what you just said. But you know, let me, maybe I don’t have all the facts. Let me think about it. Tell me again why you hold that position,” as opposed to “I don’t agree with you because you’re a no good son of a gun.” And you know, whatever expletives that I want to put on, Joe has has done his best to to unite the country. And look, we’ve done some, not we. He has done some really significant things in the in his first year in office with bipartisan support working for infrastructure. How about with the COVID vaccine, preparing for the for the new wave that’s going to come…

CHRIS WALLACE: No, I’m not. I’m not saying he hasn’t accomplished things. I’m just saying that the bitterness of this contract, and I’m not saying it’s all his fault, that hasn’t gone away. I wanna…

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS: Tt’s not all. First of all, it’s not not even. It’s not all his fault. it’s clearly not all his fault. We are so polarized. And Joe, to the contrary of exacerbating that, has always been the one who is the healer who’s tried. You cannot lead unless you can heal. That’s a Ben Nighthorse Campbell quote.

CHRIS WALLACE: Let me ask you something about healing and about empathy, because I want to put up something that you write in your book. “Whereas Trump is vulgar. Joe is gracious, whereas Trump is mean spirited, Joe is kind. He, Trump, had the mind not of a president, but of a vengeful dictator, and running against him felt almost degrading.” Whether it’s true or not, Valerie, that’s not exactly lowering the temperature.

VALERIE BIDEN OWENS: Yes, I, I’m, it’s really disappointing, but … sometimes it’s just enough. I think the divisiveness of a past president has very, very, very deep roots.

Watch above via CNN+.