Biden says coronavirus could ‘eclipse’ Great Depression in economic toll

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Rep. Kevin McCarthy on efforts to reopen the economy, support small businesses during coronavirus shutdown

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joins Shannon Bream on 'Fox News @ Night.'

Joe Biden, the former vice president and 2020 Democrat frontrunner, said in an interview Tuesday that the coronavirus outbreak may very well "eclipse" what the U.S. faced during the Great Depression.

Biden was interviewed on CNN about two weeks after President Trump signed a $2 trillion recovery package to aid businesses affected by the outbreak and while Congress is currently considering another $250 billion in stimulus for small businesses.

Biden said the current economic downturn will likely be the U.S.'s "biggest challenge in modern history" and said he believes it will “eclipse” what President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced during the Great Depression.

“We have an opportunity, Chris [Cuomo], to do so many things now to change some of the structural things that are wrong,” Biden said.  “Some of the structural things we couldn’t get anybody’s attention on. In a sense, no pun intended, the band-aid has been ripped off here.”

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Biden also discussed his phone call with President Trump and called it a “good conversation.”

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"I laid out what I thought he should be doing,” Biden said. “I laid out four or five specific points that I thought were necessary. I indicated that it is about taking responsibility, and being the commander in chief, taking on the responsibility. He asked whether or not we would not discuss the detail of what we talked about, just saying that we had a good conversation.”

Biden said Trump was “very gracious.”