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.
Melania Trump secures $7.2M for foster care scholarships at LSU ahead of Alabama showdown
DeSantis Slams Vivek Ramaswamy’s Disastrous Ohio Campaign: ‘How Bad Did They Beat Vivek? Like a Drum!’
DeSantis Gives Another Powerful Rebuke of GOP’s Strategy: ‘Screaming Socialism’ Doesn’t Work
Trump orders DOJ probe into Democrats over alleged threats against admin officials
Biden-appointed judge probes whether ICE skirted judge’s release orders in Colorado cases
Salon Signs Off: The Truth Outlasts the Smear
Newsom’s death-row commutations spark DA revolt as prosecutors warn of legal fight
Turning Point USA event at University of New Mexico ends with two arrests and a string of charges
The Left’s Joe Rogan Can’t Stop Laughing at Twisted Charlie Kirk Execution Fantasy
Slew of Arrests For Newly Elected Democrats Across the Country, Some Could Face Years in Jail
White House Slammed for Tone-Deaf Post About ‘Triumphal Arch’ Following Midterm Bloodbath
9 mystery fingerprints from OJ Simpson murder case could hold new clues more than 30 years later
Republican state lawmakers reported Omar to the IRS in 2019
California prosecutors slam Newsom’s death row commutations, accuse governor of putting ‘politics over people’
Far Worse Than Previously Reported: Big Tech’s Ticking Time Bomb Is a Massive Financial Exposure Tied to AI
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.”
Melania Trump secures $7.2M for foster care scholarships at LSU ahead of Alabama showdown
DeSantis Slams Vivek Ramaswamy’s Disastrous Ohio Campaign: ‘How Bad Did They Beat Vivek? Like a Drum!’
DeSantis Gives Another Powerful Rebuke of GOP’s Strategy: ‘Screaming Socialism’ Doesn’t Work
Trump orders DOJ probe into Democrats over alleged threats against admin officials
Biden-appointed judge probes whether ICE skirted judge’s release orders in Colorado cases
Salon Signs Off: The Truth Outlasts the Smear
Newsom’s death-row commutations spark DA revolt as prosecutors warn of legal fight
Turning Point USA event at University of New Mexico ends with two arrests and a string of charges
The Left’s Joe Rogan Can’t Stop Laughing at Twisted Charlie Kirk Execution Fantasy
Slew of Arrests For Newly Elected Democrats Across the Country, Some Could Face Years in Jail
White House Slammed for Tone-Deaf Post About ‘Triumphal Arch’ Following Midterm Bloodbath
9 mystery fingerprints from OJ Simpson murder case could hold new clues more than 30 years later
Republican state lawmakers reported Omar to the IRS in 2019
California prosecutors slam Newsom’s death row commutations, accuse governor of putting ‘politics over people’
Far Worse Than Previously Reported: Big Tech’s Ticking Time Bomb Is a Massive Financial Exposure Tied to AI
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.
