Fired-Up Biden Complains Politics Has Become ‘So Bitter’ in Rare Public Appearance: ‘I Never Thought We’d Get to This Point’

Former President Joe Biden lamented how “divided” and “bitter” politics has become in his first public appearance since his shocking cancer announcement.

Speaking at a Memorial Day ceremony in New Castle, Delaware, Biden gestured passionately as he complained that the business of politics has lost its way.

“Our politics have become so divided and so bitter,” Biden declared. “All the years I’ve been doing this, I never thought we’d get to this point. But we are. Our troops don’t wear a uniform that say I’m a Democrat or I’m a Republican. It says I’m an American! I’m an American — that’s who I am. I’m serious about this. I’m not joking.”

Repeating the point, he went on: “And folks, the politics has become, as I said, so divided. They wear the uniform of the United States of America. The only nation of the world —  literally not figuratively — founded on an idea. An idea. Every nation was founded on geography, ethnicity, some unifying principle, but not an idea. The idea of America, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We made it! That’s who we are! That’s what makes America the most unique nation in the world. Literally, not figuratively.”

Biden has been laying low since the release of CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson’s new book Original Sin, which chronicles the president’s mental decline as he sought a second term in the White House.

Ahead of the book’s release, the former president’s office announced earlier this month that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has already metastasized to his bones.

Watch above via C-SPAN.