Clinton recovering well, Biden says in Charlotte

During a day-long visit to the Charlotte area Monday, Vice President Joe Biden talked up community colleges, vouched for Hillary Clinton’s overall health and told reporters that Clinton should focus more on how she would continue growing the economy and less on detailing Donald Trump’s deficiencies.

Biden’s first stop was at a new Clinton campaign field office in west Charlotte, where he delivered a box of donuts and assured staffers and volunteers that antibiotics and bed rest would restore Clinton.

“She’s been transparent about her health. ... So we’re in good shape,” Biden said. “ And I’m encouraging her – if the doctor says take three days off, take six days off.”

Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, left a 9/11 memorial service early Sunday in New York and appeared faint. Later her doctor issued a statement saying she’d been diagnosed with pneumonia last Friday and had become dehydrated at the ceremony.

Later Monday, after working the room at the Five and Dine restaurant in Rock Hill, Biden amended his transparency comment, saying the Clinton campaign know they “screwed up” by not announcing the pneumonia the same day it was diagnosed.

He also reported that he’d talked to the Clinton campaign Monday afternoon and that he was told they planned to “put out even more information” about Clinton’s health. “And they’re going to make the doctors available to talk to you guys,” he added, referring to the press.

Biden said Clinton, who is 68, isn’t politician to get sick by running herself too hard. “Look, when you run the schedule we run – 14, 15 hours a day – I’ve had walking pneumonia, last year. And you know what it takes? It takes antibiotiocs and it takes getting through a thick skull like Hillary’s and mine to slow down.”

The 70-year-old Trump has released only a short letter from his doctor that said his patient would be the healthiest president ever, but offered no specifcs about his health.

Biden, who is 73, said, smiling, that “I’d sure like to see (Trump’s) health report. I’d like to jog with him. I don’t think he could keep up. I’m still jogging, still working out.”

Biden’s official reason for coming to Charlotte was to speak at Central Piedmont Community College about the increasing value of community colleges in a changing economy.

Speaking to an invitation-only audience at CPCC, Biden praised the school as well other community colleges. His wife, Jill Biden, teaches at Northern Virginia Community College.

“We have to have the best-educated and the highest-skilled workforce in the world,” he said. “Any nation that out-educates us will out-compete us.”

His speech focused on ways to improve the economy, which Biden said includes investing in infrastructure and education.

He said the Obama administration – and the Democrats who hope to build on its legacy – want to improve access to early childhood education and make college more affordable. And they would pay for it, he said, by cutting tax loopholes that benefit the rich, not the middle class.

At CPCC, Biden did not mention Republican presidential candidate Trump but criticized the views of today’s GOP.

“This is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said. “Republicans used to be leaders in investment in infrastructure, in transportation, ports, canals – all the things that made us who we are.”

Biden did take aim at Trump during his visit to the Clinton campaign office.

“One of the things that the Republicans have done very successfully so far is raise doubt about our candidate. There’s overwhelming doubt (about Trump),” he said. “I want people to understand the Hillary I know. I want them to know the woman I have known for over 35 years. I want them to understand the woman who understands it’s more than economics. It’s about peoples’ lives.”

Asked during his Rock Hill stop what he’d tell Clinton

Biden also spoke at a political event in Fort Mill, S.C., for Democrat Fran Person. Person is a former Biden aide who is running this year in hopes of unseating U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.

This story was originally published September 12, 2016 at 6:35 PM with the headline "Clinton recovering well, Biden says in Charlotte."