Biden: Last 48 hours have been ’18 out of 10′ on outlandish scale

Former Vice President Joe Biden said late Wednesday that the last two days have been an “18 out of 10” on the outlandish scale.

His comments came on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” where the White House hopeful discussed the impeachment inquiry launched this week centered around a phone call in which President Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company. 

Joe Biden told Kimmel that it’d be difficult to not see that Trump committed “an impeachable offense and a violation of constitutional responsibility.”

{mosads}The White House released an edited transcript of the call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday that included Trump encouraging his counterpart to work with his personal attorney and Attorney General William Barr on the investigation.

“The idea that someone would call a head of a foreign state, ahead of time withhold significant military aid that’s badly needed in order to prevent the Russian separatists, who are in Ukraine, from taking over Ukraine, and then ask basically, ‘Can you cooperate with Rudy Giuliani? He’s coming over,’ ” Biden said Wednesday night.

“The thing I learned, the thing we all learned recently, in that statement, that 2,000-word statement released, was talked about getting the Justice Department engaged in this. It’s such a blatant abuse of power that I don’t think it can stand.”

While Republicans have sought to brush off the call document as nothing new, Democrats pounced, seizing on it to argue that it bolstered the case for impeachment.

Trump has argued the conversation does not include any wrongdoing.

The nexus of the issue Trump wanted Zelensky to investigate is that Biden in his role as vice president had pressed the Ukrainian president at the time to fire a prosecutor.

While the prosecutor was investigating the gas company that Hunter Biden worked for, there is no indication that any investigation was being done into his role there.

Joe Biden stressed Wednesday that there is no proof of Trump’s allegations of a conflict of interest.

“This is not about me and it really isn’t because not a single publication said anything he has ever said about me or my son is true. Everyone has gone and researched it and said it’s not true,” he told reporters at a fundraiser in Bel Air, Calif.

Biden told Kimmel that while the impeachment inquiry unfolds, he will continue to focus on defeating Trump in the general election.

“My job is to just out and flat beat him,” he said. “What I can’t let happen, I can’t let this distract me in a way that takes me away from the issues that really are the reason why I’m running.”