WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden said Wednesday that President Donald Trump was the country’s “first” racist president.
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The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s comments came during a virtual town hall organized by the Service Employees International Union. When a questioner complained of racism surrounding the coronavirus outbreak and mentioned the president referring to it as the “China virus,” Biden responded by blasting Trump and “his spread of racism.”
“The way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening,” the former vice president said. “No sitting president has ever done this. Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed. They’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has.”
Biden says Trump is America's first racist president: "We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has.” pic.twitter.com/BbOG3GgXvq
— The Recount (@therecount) July 22, 2020
Biden also suggested that Trump is using race “as a wedge” to distract from his mishandling of the pandemic.
Many presidents — including the nation’s first, George Washington — owned slaves.
President Woodrow Wilson, the country’s 28th president, is having his name removed from Princeton University’s public policy school after recent protests against institutional racism and police brutality. Wilson, who served in the early 20th century, supported segregation and imposed it on several federal agencies.
At a White House briefing later Wednesday, Trump responded to a question about Biden’s comments by pointing to his administration’s efforts passing criminal justice reform legislation and expanding opportunity zones, as well as the low unemployment numbers for minority groups before the coronavirus outbreak.
“I’ve done more for Black Americans than anybody with the possible of exception of Abraham Lincoln,” the president said. “Nobody has even been close.”
Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser for Trump’s reelection campaign, said in a statement that ”no one should take lectures on racial justice from Joe Biden.”
Biden has vowed that, if elected, he will begin addressing institutional racism within his first 100 days of taking office. This was not the first time he’s suggested Trump’s actions were racist.
Biden has built his campaign around the election being a “battle for the soul of the nation” and says he felt compelled to run for president after he saw Trump respond to a deadly 2017 white supremacist attack on counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, by saying there were “some very fine people” on both sides.
When Trump said last year that four Democratic congresswomen of color should “go back” to their countries, Biden called it a “flat, racist attack.”
Not only a liar but an ignorant one at that, remember it was Woodrow Wilson the first Democrat president in 15 years, who segregated the federal government, firing black people and instituting pictures on job application so they don’t hire black people.
Previous presidents were as racist as the American people in general. How could they have been otherwise? The difference is President Trump’s attitudes are much worse than those of most Americans. After all, he was a kid in 1958 when his attitudes were formed.
He is a man from another time.
What will Biden do to prevent global Islamofascisim? What did President Obama do when Isis pulverized the Yazidis? Did Biden object then? The Yazidis are a race too.
Stupid remark by Biden. Does nothing for him and I can think of several presidents who were more obviously racist.
sounding desperate joe! congrats on getting the whole sentence out
Most of the commentators and readers on this site confuse race with culture. There are 3 major races, Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. You’re an ignoramus, culturally, but not a racist if you don’t agree.
Biden will get trounced in the three debates, assuming he will want to participate in three debates.
Poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids
I tell you if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black
We’ve got to recognize that the kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate and not a gangbanger
They’re gonna put y’all back in chains
the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean
You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking
I nominate Biden for the Stupidest Comment Ever Made By A Former VP. He seems to have real cognitive decline, seeing as he can’t remember some other “fine” presidents.
Trump puts people in based on their ability to do the job and get along with him. He runs the WH like a business. He does not put some one in because it looks “good” to have a black person in a high position.
On the other hand, Biden is showing some of his non factual assertions. Racist and not hiring a person who happens to be black or brown are two different things. But when you are dealing with some one who suffers from the early stages of dementia, this is not likely to be a problem.
Obama IS a general racist, and an even bigger antisemite.
Trump is NOT.
And, anything racist he is alleged to have said, was actually said by the racist media.
Liberalism is an incurable disease.
Joe biden is this country’s first and foremost CRAZY WIMP !!!!!