Days after US President Donald Trump tried to woo Indian Americans by joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a mega rally in Houston, Democratic presidential aspirant Joe Biden was hosted for a major fund-raiser by this small but rich community.
The fund-raiser in Los Angeles on Wednesday night was organised by Indian-American surgeon Sanjay Khurana and his software-engineer wife Mona, at their picturesque Manhattan Beach home. It was attended by about 150 top Indian Americans from in and around Hollywood.
Indian Americans have traditionally voted for the Democratic Party candidates. Trump, by attending the Houston rally, tried to attract Indian Americans to the Republican fold.
During his nearly 30-minute speech, Biden said he is running for president to “restore the soul of America, to rebuild the middle class and to unite the country”.
The former vice president said if Trump is elected to another term, it will fundamentally change the United States.
“We can handle, God-willing, the next 18 or 16 months if he doesn’t get us into a war. We can handle four years of President Trump,” Biden said, adding that the nation would still need to repair itself domestically and its image and relationships abroad.
“I believe four more years of Donald Trump will change the very nature of who we are as a nation, the very nature of we are and we can’t let that happen. There’s too much at stake,” he said.
Biden mentioned his visit to Mumbai when he was vice president, noting that India is the world’s largest democracy and some at the event were immigrants who became naturalised citizens.
“We’ve been able to take the best of every country in the world, from every continent,” Biden said, pointing that his great, great grandfather immigrated to the US from Ireland in a “coffin ship”. “You all decided to come, you weren’t sure what was going to happen either. The people who came had resilience. They had hope. They had optimism. They were determined. They were in fact ready to be inclusive. You represent why we’re the nation we are,” Biden said.
Despite all the “bad news and fears” about how Trump has impacted the nation, Biden said, he was more optimistic than ever about the nation’s future.
“The fact of the matter is we’re in a situation now where we have such enormous opportunity. We’re better positioned than any country in the world to own the 21st century,” Biden said.
“There is not a single thing we can’t do if we set our minds to it. And folks, everybody will benefit, the wealth, the poor, the middle class, everybody will benefit. And the world will benefit,” said the former vice president.