Kanye West used in attack ad on Joe Biden

Republicans are capitalising on Joe Biden’s claim African-Americans ‘ain’t black’ if they consider voting for Donald Trump.

Kanye West sports a MAGA cap as he meets Donald Trump in the Oval Office on October 11, 2018. Picture: Getty Images

Donald Trump’s re-election cam­paign is capitalising on Joe Biden’s claim African-Americans “ain’t black” if they consider voting for the President.

Republicans spent the weekend delighting in the fallout from the presumptive Democratic nominee’s gaffe, which prompted criticism from black groups.

An advertisement released on Saturday night used the comment as part of a video montage of black supporters of the President. The video broadened the attack to Mr Biden’s past, in particular his exaggerated claims to have “marched” in the civil rights movement.

It then used a clip of Kanye West, the rapper and sometime Trump supporter, saying “the most racist thing a person can tell me is that I am supposed to choose something based on my race”. The advert concluded with text reading: “Joe Biden: Lying. Condescending. Racist.”

The Trump campaign is putting $US1m ($1.53m) into the advertising push, Politico reported. The advertisement will be shown nationally, while another focusing on Mr Biden’s championing of the 1994 crime bill, which has become controversial because campaigners say it led to the mass incarceration of black Americans, will show in swing states.

Mr Biden, 77, made the comment on Friday on The Breakfast Club, a radio program. “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” he said.

The host, Lenard McKelvey, also known as Charlamagne tha God, hit back: “It don’t have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact I want something for my community.”

He had asked Mr Biden about his half-century in national politics, including his championing of the crime bill.

Later on Friday Mr Biden apologised, admitting he “should not have been so cavalier”. He added: “I know that the comments have come off like I was taking the African-American vote for granted. But nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never ever done that and I’ve earned it every time I’ve run.”

Mr Trump hopes to increase his share of the black vote this year, having won 8 per cent in 2016. In February his campaign spent millions on a 30-second advert during the Super Bowl telling the story of a black woman whose life sentence in prison for a drug offence was commuted by the President.

One of the leading white contenders to be Mr Biden’s running mate is also scrambling to improve her relationship with leading African-American figures after they urged the presumptive Democratic nominee not to select her.

Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator, struggled to win support from black voters during her own presidential campaign. Critics say that as a prosecutor she was reluctant to file charges in cases in which black people were killed in encounters with the police.

McKelvey warned that after Mr Biden’s comments selecting Senator Klobuchar, 60, would be “suicide”. He added: “If he did that, especially at this moment, after the comments that he made … he would be a fool not to put a black woman as his running mate.”

Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, said selecting Senator Klobuchar would “risk losing the very base the Democrats need to win”.

Others defended Senator Klobuchar. Keith Ellison, who as Minnesota’s attorney-general is the first African-American elected to statewide office there, told The Washington Post that Senator Klobuchar would be a “hardworking, tireless running mate”.

The leading African-American contender for the vice-presidential slot is Kamala Harris, 55, a senator from California who, like Senator Klobuchar, was a prosecutor before entering politics.

Another African-American candidate on Mr Biden’s list is Val Demings, 63, a congresswoman from Florida and former police chief. On Sunday she attacked the “gall and the nerve of President Trump to try to use” Mr Biden’s comments from Friday when Mr Trump “has done everything in his power to divide this country along racial lines”.

The Times