As Joe Biden was set to announce his new plan for racial equity and justice, the Trump campaign released a statement arguing the former vice president is the one with a troubling past on race.
“Joe Biden’s record and proposals prove that he indiscriminately spreads economic misery for all Americans, so he has addressed inequality that way. And the basic fact remains that no one should listen to a lecture on racial justice from Joe Biden,” the statement from Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson reads. “He palled around with notorious, racist, segregationist senators, bragged about receiving an award from George Wallace, eulogized the exalted cyclops of the KKK, opposed the desegregation of schools through busing, and said he didn’t want his kids to grow up in a ‘racial jungle.’”
The memo also discussed Biden’s tendency to spread the story that he was an integral “part of the Civil Rights movement” and his story about being arrested by South African authorities while trying to see Nelson Mandela.
“There is no worse person to help bring Americans together and address racial inequality than Joe Biden,” the statement continues.
On Tuesday afternoon, Biden is set to speak in Wilmington, Delaware, where he is revealing his new “Build Back Better” proposal for “advancing racial equity across the American economy.” Included in that plan are more funds for minority-owned businesses and pressuring firms to lend to people of color.
“The pandemic has shone a bright light on racial disparities in health and health care — as Black and Brown Americans have suffered and died from the coronavirus at rates far higher than white Americans,” a statement from Biden read this morning. “The economic crisis has hit Black and Brown communities especially hard, with Black unemployment at 15.4 percent, Latino unemployment at 14.5 percent, and businesses owned by Black, Latino, and Asian American people closing down at alarming rates. We are also seeing a national reckoning on racial justice and the tragic human costs of systemic racism in the murder of George Floyd and so many other Black men, women, and children.”
