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President Biden memorialized his “dear friend” former Vice President Walter Mondale as “one of the great giants in American history” during a service for the late pol in Minnesota on Sunday.
“He was loved by the American people because he reflected the goodness of the American people,” Biden said of Mondale, who Ronald Reagan trounced in the 1984 presidential election.
Biden remembered Mondale, who died April 21, as a close friend and supporter “not on a political level, but on a personal level.”
“He was one of the finest men you’ve ever known and most decent people I ever dealt with and one of the toughest, smartest men I’ve ever worked with,” the president said. “God bless you, my dear friend.”
Biden also recalled how Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s vice president from 1977 to 1981, inspired his own turn as vice president under Barack Obama.
“Fritz recounted that his greatest strength wasn’t his expertise in a particular policy area. It was the genuine personal relationship he built with President Jimmy Carter,” Biden said of Mondale.
“Fritz embraced everybody with the belief that everyone’s entitled to be treated with dignity.”
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