Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called Joanne Rogers, the widow of children’s TV icon Fred Rogers, on Wednesday while in her husband’s hometown after she described herself as a “very big Biden fan.”
Biden made the video call while on a train trip through Pennsylvania that stopped in Latrobe, the home of the late Fred Rogers.
Joanne Rogers earlier this month described herself as a “very big Biden fan” during an interview with the Daily Beast, describing him as someone who was honest and needed during troubling times.
“I think he’s kind,” Rogers said. “I think we all need somebody like Biden who can give us little pats on the back.”
She said she didn’t like how the former vice president has previously been criticized for giving too many hugs.
“I said, ‘Listen, I understand that completely, I’m a hugger, and I would certainly want a hug from him,’ ” she said.
During the same interview, Rogers called Biden’s opponent President Trump “a horrible person.”
“This man is pathologically ill. Mentally ill,” she said the same week that Trump held a rally in Latrobe.
She blasted Trump for telling lies when asked why she considers him “horrible.”
“I think maybe the fact that Mr. Trump seldom tells the truth,” she said. “If he does, it’s just a fluke, I think. But the fact [is] that I can’t believe anything he says, not even the simplest thing.”
Rogers said her husband, who hosted “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” for 31 seasons, kept his politics quiet when he was alive.
“Fred tried to stay pretty quiet about politics, basically because his program was for children,” adding that she can speak her own opinion now that she’s “alone.”
She said she will “go into mourning” if Trump is reelected in November.
“I can’t even imagine. I would feel so badly,” she said.