Former Vice President Joe Biden linked President Donald Trump to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in a sermon on Sunday in a black church in South Carolina on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“We can defeat this moment of hate. … This president and his — the Ku Klux Klans and the rest of them, they think they’ve beaten us again. But they have no idea — we’re just coming back. God love you all,” Biden told the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina.
In a halting speech, Biden also repeated the false claim that President Donald Trump had referred to white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people” in August 2017.
“They asked the president what he thought, and he said, ‘There are very fine people on both sides’,” Biden claimed.
In fact, Trump specifically condemned those groups, as the transcript of his remarks reveals.
Trump says Democrats replacing Platner is ‘very hard for them to do’
Trump’s voter ID bill catches unlikely break as McConnell remains sidelined
DOJ’s Harmeet Dhillon: Some states have ‘homework to do’ to keep noncitizens from voting in midterm elections
House Republican Thomas Massie suggests Obamacare could now be labeled ‘Trumpcare’
Trump holds Washington hostage over SAVE Act as midterm clock ticks on GOP control
Maryland may finally see redistricting action — just not the way Wes Moore wanted
US on track to intercept 16 times as many suspected terrorists at border under Trump thanks to cartel designations
Music and patriotism: Dukes of Hazzard star praises community and family at Great American State Fair
Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing: Judge orders redactions to ex-lover’s video testimony
Social media influencer and model, 22, killed in violent highway crash
Trump threatens troop withdrawals if ‘very good deal’ on Greenland isn’t struck
Stepdad accused of sex assault as cops widen probe into girl’s lethal Benadryl ingredient dose
More than 30 injured after Maryland transit bus crashes into building near Baltimore
House Dem back in the spotlight as brother faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted
Platner drops out of crucial Senate race after bombshell rape allegation torpedoes campaign
Trump had praised non-violent protesters on either side of the removal of a Confederate statue as “very fine people,” contrasting them with violent rioters, and saying neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be “condemned totally.”
Breitbart News specifically confronted Biden directly at the Iowa State Fair last summer with the fact that he was misquoting the president. He and his campaign continue to claim otherwise, and to spread the “Charlottesville hoax.”
Trump says Democrats replacing Platner is ‘very hard for them to do’
Trump’s voter ID bill catches unlikely break as McConnell remains sidelined
DOJ’s Harmeet Dhillon: Some states have ‘homework to do’ to keep noncitizens from voting in midterm elections
House Republican Thomas Massie suggests Obamacare could now be labeled ‘Trumpcare’
Trump holds Washington hostage over SAVE Act as midterm clock ticks on GOP control
Maryland may finally see redistricting action — just not the way Wes Moore wanted
US on track to intercept 16 times as many suspected terrorists at border under Trump thanks to cartel designations
Music and patriotism: Dukes of Hazzard star praises community and family at Great American State Fair
Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing: Judge orders redactions to ex-lover’s video testimony
Social media influencer and model, 22, killed in violent highway crash
Trump threatens troop withdrawals if ‘very good deal’ on Greenland isn’t struck
Stepdad accused of sex assault as cops widen probe into girl’s lethal Benadryl ingredient dose
More than 30 injured after Maryland transit bus crashes into building near Baltimore
House Dem back in the spotlight as brother faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted
Platner drops out of crucial Senate race after bombshell rape allegation torpedoes campaign
Biden has made the false claim throughout his campaign, citing it as his very reason for running in his launch video. His sermon Sunday repeated what he has said previously in South Carolina — but with an explicit link to the KKK.
Biden was introduced by Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL), who endorsed Biden and said that there was “no bigger threat to [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s] legacy than the person who is in the White House now.”
The former vice president said that he had been involved in the civil rights movement “for real” as a teenager, and said “I got my education — for real — in the black church. And that’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact.”
Biden repeatedly referred to former President Barack Obama, who has not yet endorsed anyone in the 2020 primary.
Sunday’s sermon was not the first time Biden has linked a political opponent to the worst of white racism, in an effort to appeal to an African-American audience. During his 2012 re-election campaign, Biden told a predominantly black group of voters in Virginia that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would “put y’all back in chains.”
The New York Times reported that Biden is expected to join other Democratic hopefuls in a rally at the state capitol in Columbia for an annual march in King’s memory. Biden’s support among black voters in the state is seen as a “firewall” against possible victories by his rivals in other early primary states, who poll poorly thus far among black voters.
Story cited here.
