Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says President Biden has every right to be irritated about his situation.
Grassley, the longest serving Republican in the U.S. Senate, watched Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night. “I saw a tear coming from President Biden’s eyes and I don’t blame him for that. Under his circumstances of service to this country, I think he has a right to feel let down,” Grassley said. “He got 14 million votes to be the nominee of the party, then you’ve get Pelosi and Obama working together to squeeze him out.”
Grassley and Biden served in the Senate together for 28 years. When asked earlier this summer whether Biden was fit to serve as president, Grassley said he was not going to “dump on Biden” about his age, but was focused on critiquing Biden’s policies.
“He’s been shunned out of the party or shunned out of the race for another term and I just think that’s very unethical and very unfair to him,” Grassley said in Le Mars this week, “and he has every right to be irritated.”
Grassley, who is nine years older than Biden, made his comments after visiting a business in Plymouth County. Grassley said he’s completed his annual tour of Iowa’s 99 counties with a final stop in Woodbury County.
“At least in two-thirds of those meetings, the Farm Bill has been an issue,” Grassley says. “Probably in half of the meetings, the high price of prescription drugs…I’ll bet at least half the meetings, the open border, the illegal entry of migrants into our country has been a major issue.”
In a post on social media, Grassley said he celebrated his 44th tour of Iowa’s 99 counties by having both a strawberry malt and a Reece’s Blizzard at a Dairy Queen in Sioux City. Grassley was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980 after serving six years in the U-S House.
(Additional reporting by John Slegers, KLEM, Le Mars)