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Vice President Joe Biden closes out Aspen Ideas Festival

Photo by Matt Ferro

  Vice President Joe Biden closed out the 12th annual Aspen Ideas Festival Saturday.

A main theme that emerged over the past nine days at the Aspen Ideas Festival was the concern about an intense polarization in the United States. Biden had the final word on that point. He thinks that politics are particularly divided right now and he is concerned about this election.

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Listen to the second part of the conversation here.

“The point is that we don’t listen to each other much anymore and it worries me. And that’s what worries me about this election. It looks like an election that is going to be conducted that is frontal assault on the other person,” Biden said. “And I’m not sure, even when there are the substantive arguments being made how much they will be listened to by the press. We got to get by this place. We really do for the sake of the country.”

The Vice President also talked about Moonshot, his cancer research initiative, which is a follow-up promise he made to his son, Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer a year ago.