Joe Biden talks Ukraine, but not impeachment, in Iowa --- as the Senate trial complicates his messaging

AMES, Iowa - "There are people being killed in Ukraine by Russian soldiers right now, as I speak to you," Joe Biden said at a campaign event here on Tuesday afternoon. "As I speak to you!"

Also as the former vice president spoke at Iowa State University, the Senate debated the rules for the trial of President Donald Trump. The president was impeached by the House for his alleged efforts to coerce the Ukrainian government into announcing an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden by freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid that Congress approved to help fend off Russia's ongoing occupation of the Donbas region.

The Democratic presidential candidate brought up Ukraine to criticize Trump for appeasing Vladimir Putin and not supporting allies, which Biden says emboldens the revanchist Russians. "Look at what's happening in Hungary," Biden continued, firing himself up. "When you live next to the bear, and the Americans don't look like they're going to take care of you, what happens? You make accommodations with the bear! It's just like in the Cold War."

Biden never mentioned impeachment during his hour-long, town hall-style meeting, and no one in the audience asked about it, but the issue hovered. "One of the things that is on the ballot here is basically the abuse of power," he said. "We've never seen a time, in my view, in modern history where we've seen such an abuse of power by a president of the United States of America, disregarding the truth and using the following tactic: If you lie enough . . . and you repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it and repeat it, eventually the notion is that a number of people are going to think it's true."

The split-screen between the impeachment trial and Biden's event showcased a paradox that the next few weeks may put in even starker relief. The centerpiece of Biden's pitch is that he can bridge the partisan divides and work with Republican senators to get big things done, yet those very Republican senators voted in lockstep on Tuesday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to block witnesses and subpoenas, just as they banded together to block Merrick Garland from even getting a hearing four years ago when Barack Obama nominated him to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Biden's much ballyhooed relationships did no good then, even when Obama picked a moderate judge he believed would appeal to Republicans.

Biden nodded to how discordant it might seem for him to talk about being able to work with the other side amid all the acrimony. He joked that his opponents have called him too old and too naive. "I thought they were contradictory notions," Biden said, before rejecting the idea that he cannot work with the modern GOP. "I know this new Republican Party better than anybody. I've been the object of their affection for some time now," he continued, drawing laughter. "I fully understand the way they try to malign my only surviving son and the way they've gone after my family, even my grandkids."

He explained that he doesn't hold grudges, which he said is the key to compromise and even the survival of the republic. "Look, one of the things a president has to do is you have to be a fighter and a competitor, but a president also needs to be a healer," Biden continued. "I can't keep a grudge in terms of the way they've gone after me. But it's not about me. It's about you. It's about the American people. We've got to heal the country. . . . I'm convinced that it can be done. I've done it my whole career."

I interviewed a dozen Biden supporters after the rally, and all of them cited without prompting either his ability to work with Republican lawmakers or appeal to traditional GOP voters as one of the reasons they're planning to caucus for him on Feb. 3. "He's the one Trump fears the most, so that's why he's been targeted," said Bob Lorr, 82, of Ames. "Also, to straighten out this mess, Democrats are going to have to appeal to independents and Never Trumpers, and Joe is moderate enough that he can do that better than any of the other candidates."

To be sure, the Biden campaign remains on edge about the Ukraine topic generally and Trump's allegations specifically. When an Iowa voter accused Biden last month of "selling access" by getting his son a job he wasn't qualified for, he angrily called the questioner "a damn liar" and said he had nothing to do with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The testy exchange overshadowed John Kerry's endorsement at the same event.

As proceedings began yesterday, Biden's rapid response director, Andrew Bates, posteda four-minute video on YouTube of himself drinking a beer at a Philadelphia bar as he argues, sometimes with profanity, that his boss did nothing wrong by trying to remove Viktor Shokin as Ukraine's top prosecutor. While his father was vice president, Hunter served on the board of Burisma, Ukraine's largest private gas company, whose owner came under scrutiny by Ukrainian prosecutors for possible abuse of power and unlawful enrichment. Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have promoted an unfounded allegation that Biden pushed for Shokin's ouster to stop a corruption investigation into Burisma to protect his son. Hunter, 49, is no longer on the board and was not accused of wrongdoing.

Biden alluded to his children multiple times during the event, though he never mentioned Hunter by name. He often name-checks his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in his 40s, as he did again on Tuesday to express how proud he is that there's a freeway named for him in Kosovo. Explaining why he opposes tuition-free college, Biden said he doesn't think it would have been fair to make taxpayers foot the bill for his son to go Yale Law School. Hunter graduated from there in 1996.

As Biden talked in Ames, White House counsel Pat Cipollone took digs at the four senators running for president who needed to report to the Capitol for jury duty. "Some of you are upset because you should be in Iowa right now," he said on the floor, prompting several senators to glance toward Bernie Sanders.

The trial meant that Biden had Central Iowa to himself. This swelled the media throng that usually follows him. About 180 voters came to see Biden speak while 70 journalists, including 14 television cameramen, observed from a press pen. "You all have the keys to the kingdom here in Iowa," Biden told the voters. The 77-year-old wears a full suit and tie on the trail, more formal than his Democratic rivals, and he tends to draw older crowds than his opponents.

An Iowa poll released Monday put Biden in the lead with 25% among likely caucusgoers, followed by Warren with 17%, Buttigieg with 16%, Sanders with 14% and Klobuchar with 11%. The quarterly survey, conducted by a Democratic pollster for Focus on Rural America, also asked which candidate is "best equipped" to handle the tensions with Iran "and other global hot spots." Biden led with 42%.

The survey, in the field during the three days after last week's debate, is different than the Des Moines Register poll, which put Sanders in the lead in this state.

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