EXCLUSIVE: Biden says he'll make stance on packing Supreme Court clear when Senate votes on Amy Coney Barrett
DETROIT (FOX 2) - With a little more than two weeks before ballots are due across the country, former Vice President Joe Biden is stopping in Michigan to urge voting and will sit down for a one-on-one interview with FOX TV's Roop Raj.
Biden is visiting Southfield, Mich. on Friday to discuss his plans on protecting and expanding access to affordable health care.
During his visit to Michigan, Biden has agreed to a one-on-one interview with FOX TV which you can watch above.
Biden then went to Detroit to urge early in-person voting at clerk's office or voting centers which you can watch below or app users, watch on our Facebook page here.
The interview is similar to one done by President Donald Trump from the White House on September 21.
SUPREME COURT
As Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, moves through the nomination process, Biden has ducked questions about packing the Supreme Court until earlier this week when he said he's "not a fan."
Biden argued Friday that the focus should remain on Trump and Republicans’ efforts to push through Barrett as a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the Nov. 3 election.
"I'm gonna make clear my position in the next several days when they vote on this nominee but I've got to keep the focus on that," Biden said. "In the meantime, we should focus on what's happening right now. What's happening right now is they're about to rush through - speaking of packing the court - for the first time in American history, in an election, a nominee has been appointed, named by a president when the election has already begun. That's wrong. It shouldn't happen."
Biden said the one chance the American people can have a voice in the Supreme Court nomination process is during an election.
"The people's one opportunity to decide on lifetime appointments for court appointments is during an election: who they vote for in the senate and who they vote for in the president."
As the Senate has gone through the process of questioning Amy Coney Barrett, Biden says he'll announce his decision soon.
"When the committee makes a decision and the vote begins to occur, that's when I'll make my decision," he said.
RELATED: History of the Supreme Court: Why do 9 justices serve? What is ‘packing the court’?
Biden also said this nomination was completely different from the one Barack Obama tried to nominate in 2016 because that was nine months before the election and there was precedent set.
"Many, many many many justices have been appointed in those circumstances. This is once the election has begun and the election is already underway."
Still, Biden did not waiver on the idea of adding justices.
"As you know I've not been a fan of packing the court but what may happen is we may have to take a look at how this all works out and determine whether there's other means by which we should take a look at how to make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen," he said.
COVID-19
With the COVID-19 pandemic a focal point of the election, what is the first Biden will do if he wins the White House and how will he address the pandemic?
After speaking on Friday about his health care plan, Biden also talked with Roop Raj about the virus and says attacks on him and President Barack Obama's response to the swine flu don't compare to COVID-19.
"We lost 15,000 people in the swine flu. We did not shut down any business. Nothing happened in terms of the economy. What happened in this case, I laid out as early as the beginning of February, that this was a crisis. We left behind for the President a pandemic office because we learned from the swine flu and other things that have happened that we need to be prepared for viruses that could come from abroad, that you couldn't build a wall to stop," he said.
Biden also criticized Trump's treatment for not seeing for himself where the virus originated.
"I was pushing for the president to go and insist on you see the source of where this is coming from. He would not even ask, to the best of our knowledge yet, he did not even ask that of Xi Jinping, the president of China. Furthermore, he then complimented the president for being so transparent and we owe them a debt of gratitude and then when he found out how bad it was, he didn' say a single word," Biden said.
He said the country needs to speed up testing to better trace and track the spread of the virus and that claims that he called the Chinese travel ban xenophobic were wrong.
"I didn't call the travel ban xenophobic. I said he's xenophobic. It wasn't about the travel ban, it was about how - look what happened with the hate crimes going up against Asian Americans. He's been xenophobic across the board. Look what he's done in terms of Muslims - the Muslim ban. Look what he's done with in terms of dealing with everybody of different races or different circumstances."
Biden said the idea of mandatory vaccines isn't practical if the vaccine were ready immediately but he could see that schools or businesses require it, much like schools require a measles vaccine. Whenever it is readily available, Biden said it has to be thoroughly approved by scientists before a mandatory vaccine would be necessary.
"The president has undermined confidence in a vaccine by putting pressure on CDC, health care, and health departments," he said. "It's about having confidence that the scientists are putting it out: a consensus and transparency that it works and it's safe."
FOX interviewed Trump in a live one-on-one with similar topics. You can read more and watch that interview here.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.