CRITICAL

Beto O’Rourke Knocks Joe Biden: ‘We Cannot Return to the Past’

The Texas Democrat leveled his sharpest criticism against the ex-veep yet.

Beto O’Rourke leveled his sharpest criticism yet against former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday during an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We cannot return to the past. We cannot simply be about defeating Donald Trump,” the former Texas congressman said.

Asked directly whether “Joe Biden [is] a return to the past?,” O’Rourke replied: “He is. And that cannot be who we are going forward. We’ve got to be bigger. We’ve got to be bolder. We have to set a much higher mark and be relentless in pursuing that.”

“Did he support the war in Iraq that forever destabilized the Middle East? Does he really believe that women of lower income should be able to make their own decisions about their own body, be able to afford health care to do that?” the ex-congressman said, running through Biden’s policies that may be viewed as out-of-touch with current Democratic politics. “So I’m not exactly sure what he believes or what he should apologize for,” O’Rourke concluded. “I only know that this country should be able to do far better.”

This is a new approach for O'Rourke who has previously offered effusive praise for Biden, once saying “I think he’s done an extraordinary job for this country as senator and as vice president.”