President Trump called recent remarks Joe Biden made about diversity of thought within the African American community “insulting.”
The Washington Examiner Reports:
Joe Biden just said that Latinos have diversity of thought, unlike Black Americans…
This is disgusting!pic.twitter.com/CxzJKkabwY
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 6, 2020
“Joe Biden, this morning, totally disparaged and insulted the black community. What he said is incredible. And I don’t know what’s going on with him, but it was a very insulting statement he made,” Trump told reporters on the White House Lawn. “I guess you’ll figure that out. You’ll see it in a little while. But it was a great insult to the black community.”
During an interview recorded from what appears to be his basement on Tuesday and published on Thursday, Biden praised the Latino American community for what he characterized as a more open-minded approach to politics than members of the black community.
“Unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things,” Biden said. “You go to Florida, you find a very different attitude about immigration in certain places than you do when you’re in Arizona.”
Trump 2020 senior adviser Katrina Pierson joined Trump in condemning Biden’s remarks, labeling them as “condescending.”
“The condescending white liberal racism that oozes out of Joe Biden is disgusting. We already know that he thinks ‘you ain’t Black’ if you’re not voting for him. And we know that when a Black journalist asks him a tough question, he brings up cocaine use and says ‘are you a junkie?’ Now he arrogantly tells a group of Black reporters that ‘you all know’ that Black people think alike,” she said in a statement.
“There’s a reason Joe Biden can’t count on the support of Black voters and it’s because of his plantation owner mentality. President Trump has a true record of helping Black Americans, with unprecedented economic opportunity, record funding for HBCUs, criminal justice reform, and support for school choice. Joe Biden would rather we all just shut up, get in line, and know our place,” Pierson added.
Polls show Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has a commanding lead in terms of favorability within the black community when compared to Trump. A total of 77% of black voters said they support Biden, compared to 7% for Trump, according to a Quinnipiac poll released last month.
Biden has spent part of his campaign painting Trump as unnecessarily divisive on race issues at best and overtly racist at worst.
“The way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening,” Biden said late last month.
Trump oftentimes responds to criticisms of his record on race by arguing he has done more for the African American community than any other president in recent memory.
“My Admin has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln. Passed Opportunity Zones with @SenatorTimScott, guaranteed funding for HBCU’s, School Choice, passed Criminal Justice Reform, lowest Black unemployment, poverty, and crime rates in history,” Trump tweeted in early June. “AND THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”
Biden has voiced support for the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd and the sweeping demonstrations advocating for racial justice in America.
“I won’t traffic in fear and division. I won’t fan the flames of hate,” Biden said during a campaign event in Philadelphia last month. “I will seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued this country — not use them for political gain.”
Trump this week called Black Lives Matter a Marxist political organization with a hateful, anti-police message.
“Black Lives Matter, when did it start? Marching down the street screaming ‘pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon.’ They were talking about policemen and -women,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News.
Trump has also questioned Biden’s mental acuity, suggesting a deteriorating mental state could be leading to some of his verbal misstatements or embellishments.
“Biden can’t put two sentences together,” Trump said during a recent interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace. “They wheel him out, he goes up, he repeats — they ask him questions, he reads a teleprompter, and then he goes back into his basement.”
Biden brushes away most of Trump’s barbs, saying the president is trying to distract from what he says is a poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic and sagging national poll numbers.
The Trump campaign has also asked for a fourth presidential debate before the November election, a suggestion the Biden campaign has previously rejected.
“Joe Biden looks forward to facing Donald Trump in a multi-debate series that the American people have come to expect from their leaders; we hope that President Trump would not break that tradition or make excuses for a refusal to participate,” the Biden campaign said in a statement in June. “No one should be fooled: the Trump campaign’s new position is a debate distraction.”
