Donald Trump’s lies like slavery deniers, says Joe Biden
Joe Biden has compared Donald Trump’s ‘lies’ to attempts to write slavery out of the history of the US Civil War, in a campaign speech aimed directly at black voters.
Joe Biden has compared Donald Trump’s “lies” to attempts to write slavery out of the history of the US Civil War and warned of the dangers of extremist rhetoric, in a campaign speech aimed directly at black voters.
The US President launched his latest assault on Mr Trump’s suitability to be president at the Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine black worshippers were shot dead by a white supremacist in 2015. He said the murders were motivated by the “poison” of white supremacy that “throughout our history has ripped this nation apart”.
With opinion polls showing an erosion of crucial black support for Mr Biden, the speech amounted to part two of a hard-hitting start to the year for the 81-year-old President, targeting Mr Trump as a “loser” trying to rewrite history by falsely claiming that he won the 2020 election.
“Once again there are some in this country trying to turn a loss into a lie,” he said after recalling that the losing Confederacy sought to portray its defence of slavery as a war to defend states’ rights.
“We all saw with our own eyes the truth of what happened [on January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol. That violent mob was whipped up by lies from a defeated former president. They tried to steal the election. Now they’re trying to steal history, telling us that the violent mob was, and I quote, a ‘peaceful protest’. That’s not democracy. That’s not America. In America, we all count, and losers are taught to concede when they lose. He’s a loser.”
Mr Biden listed gains for black voters during his time in the White House, including a $US7bn investment in historic black universities and the fact that more black Americans than ever now had health insurance.
Their support effectively ensured that he won the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020 and then helped him to victory in the election, where he had the backing of 87 per cent of black voters, compared with 12 per cent for Mr Trump, according to exit poll analysis by Edison Research.
That gap has since narrowed: last month Mr Trump’s support among black voters was put at 17 per cent by the GenForward survey, commissioned by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago, with Mr Biden on 63 per cent.
Black voters make up about 14 per cent of the electorate.
Mr Biden’s primary campaign in 2020 was struggling until the fourth state contest in South Carolina, when he recorded a huge victory thanks mainly to black voters.
That win owed a lot to James Clyburn, a senior South Carolina congressman, who rallied for him. However, Mr Clyburn, 83, said at the weekend: “We have not been able to break through that MAGA (Make America Great Again) wall in order to get to people exactly what this president has done.”
Mr Clyburn cited Mr Biden’s efforts to cut student loan debt, cap the price of insulin and appoint more black women as judges than all other presidents combined. “This president is keeping his promises, but people keep focusing on the one or two things he did not get accomplished,” he said.
The Times
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