Vice President Joe Biden (D) laughed when asked by Rachel Maddow to choose between Donald Trump and Pope Francis on Thursday night.
“Pope Francis, Trump,” Biden said, weighing both names.
He continued, laughing, “It’s not a hard call for me. It’s not even close.”
Biden—who said, “I love that guy” when Maddow first brought up the pontiff—did not disagree with his sentiment. (Biden is a devout Catholic.)
“Well, I am not a theologian, nor am I a priest or a minister, but I think building walls is fundamentally contrary to what made this country what it is,” he said in an interview in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Biden said fear shouldn’t dictate border security.
“Should we have border security there? Yes. But the idea of the U.S. erecting a wall for the world to see makes a lie of everything we say about ourselves. It’s a little bit like why the President and I feel so strongly about closing Guantanamo (Bay prison). It is inconsistent with who we are,” he added.
The pope said Thursday that building walls instead of bridges between people was “not Christian,” in a reference to Trump’s border plan, after the head of the Catholic Church spent about a week on the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump called the pontiff’s remarks “disgraceful.”
Despite Trump’s harsh words for the pontiff, Biden said he “would not be surprised” if Trump was the Republican nominee for President, but “would be surprised if he got elected.”
Here’s the full interview.
Watch the clip, from MSNBC, below:
