Dr. Jill Biden said Tuesday the public needs to focus on the “good” that resulted from what Anita Hill experienced testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas while her husband Joe Biden was chairman of the panel.
“They had the phone call,” Jill Biden said in an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.
“He apologized to her. And the one good thing that has come out of this is that he made sure that there were now women senators on that committee,” she said in a separate clip. “He has written the Violence Against Women Act. So you have to look at the good that came out of that.”
[Opinion: Joe Biden didn’t hurt Anita Hill, and she needs to grow up]
Jill Biden expressed similar sentiments in a recent interview with NPR, where she said “he apologized for the way the hearings were run, and now it’s kind of, it’s time to move on.”
Joe Biden called Hill, who testified before Congress in 1991 that she was sexually harassed by Thomas, to apologize last month for “what she endured” before the Senate Judiciary Committee before he announced he was running for president in the Democratic primary race.
“They had a private discussion where he shared with her directly his regret for what she endured and his admiration for everything she has done to change the culture around sexual harassment in this country,” Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement last month.
In response, Hill told the New York Times that she believed the apology was inadequate and that she would not back Biden in his presidential bid.
“I cannot be satisfied by simply saying I’m sorry for what happened to you. I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose,” she said.
