WATCH: An Emotional Joe Biden Reacts to Trump’s ‘Viciously Classless’ Attacks on His Son

Former Vice President Joe Biden gave an emotional reaction to President Donald Trump’s attacks on Hunter Biden, telling a local news anchor exactly what he was thinking during that moment at Tuesday night’s debate.

The current Democratic presidential nominee sat for several local interviews on Wednesday, including with Russ Mitchell of Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC’s 3News.

During the interview, Russell asked Biden about Trump’s relentless assault on Hunter, and got an emotionally-charged response.

“I want to ask you about a moment last night, you were talking about your son Beau, obviously very proud, the president went to attack your son Hunter, obviously you said some things showing you a very proud of him as well,” Russell said. “You stopped, you looked at him, you gave him quite a look. Can I ask you what was going through your head at that moment?”

With a pained expression, Biden replied “I just thought that it was hard for me to believe that a president of the United States would be so viciously classless and do what he did.”

Pausing repeatedly to reflect, Biden continued.

“I wasn’t trying to, look, we knew, and he announced and his people announced, to all of you major outlets, that they were going to try to just attack my family and to get me angry,” Biden said. “And all I kept thinking was I just, I just, I wonder how many people had to take their kids away from the television set when this was going on and, just to say ‘This is not who we are. This is not who we are as a nation,’ that’s all I kept thinking.”

Russell also asked Biden about potential changes to the debate rules.

“Have you agreed to the future debates?” Russell asked, to which Biden replied “Yes I have.”

“Do you want the rules changed?” Russell asked.

“Well I would hope they’d be able to gain more control so that he, I mean look, I thought it was, I thought it was embarrassing for the country the way the president acted for the rest of the world watching this,” Biden said. “But the next debate is going to be a town hall-type debate and I’m really looking forward to it, because as I understand it, audience members are going to ask us a question and we get to answer the question, each of us. And I just hope there’s an opportunity to actually answer the questions.”

Watch the clip above via WKYC.

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