Long-shot Biden challenger praises Trump White House for outreach

Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman mounting a long-shot challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, praised the Trump White House for its outreach on issues and legislation he worked on and said he had “not seen any of that reach-out by the Biden White House”.

“I don’t believe that we’ve had a president recently that invested in the way one needs to develop … those relationships and that work ethic,” Phillips told Johanna Maska, host of the Press Advance podcast and a former aide to Barack Obama.

“And I’ll be forthright: the Trump White House worked very closely with me in my office on two really important initiatives.”

Phillips’ criticism may touch a nerve in the White House but it will not be a surprise. The 54-year-old has insisted on the campaign trail that Biden is both too old and the wrong man to take on Trump should Trump win the Republican nomination. His effort to primary Biden has also irritated the White House, which has been staunch in its criticism of him.

Phillips described a “Friday evening” intervention by the Trump administration to extend a US Customs and Immigration program, Deferred Enforced Departure , in relation to Liberians in the US, “sign[ing] off on an extension of that program that saved hundreds of families” from deportation to the African country.

In March 2018, Trump terminated Deferred Enforced Departure for Liberians, ordering a 12-month wind-down period, a decision the Immigrant Legal Resource Center condemned as “cruel”. In March 2020, Trump extended the wind-down period. In January 2021, Biden reinstated Deferred Enforced Departure for Liberians. It is now extended through 30 June this year.

Phillips also discussed working with Chip Roy, a hard-right Texas Republican, on the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act, a 2020 reform to Covid-era federal aid, concerning forgiveness of small business loans.

“And that was another Trump initiative,” Phillips said. “And when I say now … that the Trump White House worked really closely with us to get that done, I’ve not seen any of that reach-out by the Biden White House, I have to be honest with you.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Phillips told Maska the US needed an “executive” in the White House, saying “the President Obama I loved, he was never an executive”.

Maska said Obama was “an amazing leader, and could absolutely have been an executive, like clearly was an organiser, clearly was a professor”.

Biden was not an executive, Phillips said, and nor was Trump, whom he called “a disaster … a developer, not an executive”.

Phillips is a former executive of Phillips Distilling Company, his family’s firm.

“Back then,” he said, “I built Belvedere vodka, then Talenti gelato with my partners and two great brands.

“I had a wonderful life in Minnesota. I was watching that election in 2016 [when Trump beat Hillary Clinton]. Of course, I was appalled. But it was really waking up the next morning to my youngest daughter in tears. She had overcome Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She’s a gay woman. I didn’t know that at the time.

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“But what she was afraid of really jarred me, about being a young American woman, afraid of her own country. And I promised my daughters that morning, I would do something. And I did. I flipped a district that had not elected a Democrat since 1958. And I beat a four-term incumbent Republican who had won by 14 points, and we won by 12. And my last election, I won by almost 20.”

Phillips will not seek re-election this year.

“I know how to appeal to independents and Republicans,” he said. “I use invitation not confrontation.

“And my style of leadership as an executive, unlike President Biden … is quite different. And I think it’s time for a significant change in leadership, a new approach to generating legislation that actually includes our opponents across the aisle, to address the biggest issues of the day, because Congress has become a completely dysfunctional mess.”

Phillips would expect few arguments there. He told Maska that in “three terms in the US Congress … I have found a way to package progressive notions and principles, to make them understood by independents and moderate Republicans and actually get things done.

“… And I think it’s time for change. Costs and chaos are on the minds of just about every American, and they’re being unaddressed.”

Trump, Phillips said, posed an “existential threat … to democracy, a clear and present danger”. But, Phillips repeated, at 81 Biden is the wrong man to take Trump on.

“People’s image of [Biden] is fully baked,” Phillips said. “Americans believe he’s too old and not up to the task. And my job is not to opine about whether he is or isn’t. I think he is. But Americans have made up their minds.

“And if they didn’t, [Trump], a man under federal indictment, whose New York charity was shut down for fraud, whose businesses have gone bankrupt, who is a most corrupt and dangerous man who lacks extraordinary character and values, is beating Joe Biden. That’s what matters.”