Joe Biden compared President Trump’s recent retweet of a video featuring a man shouting the phrase “white power” to the president’s response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“Today the President shared a video of people shouting ‘white power’ and said they were ‘great.’ Just like he did after Charlottesville,” Biden tweeted on Sunday. “We’re in a battle for the soul of the nation — and the President has picked a side. But make no mistake: it’s a battle we will win.”
Today the President shared a video of people shouting “white power” and said they were “great.” Just like he did after Charlottesville.
We’re in a battle for the soul of the nation — and the President has picked a side. But make no mistake: it’s a battle we will win.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 28, 2020
A White House spokesman said earlier that Trump did not hear the man shout “white power” in the clip, which has since been removed from the president’s Twitter page. He claimed that Trump was focused on the “enthusiasm” of his supporters in the video and not on the racial statement made by the man. In his caption for the retweet, Trump addressed the supporters and not the remark that was made.
“Thank you to the great people of The Villages,” he wrote. “The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!“
Biden officially announced his presidential campaign with a video featuring Trump’s response to the 2017 rally in Charlottesville. The former vice president accused Trump of saying that the white supremacists were “very fine people.” The president was referring to the protests calling for the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, in which he felt there were “very fine people on both sides” of the argument relating to the statue.
Biden was similarly ensnared in a scandal about racism during the early days of the Democratic presidential primary after he praised the “civility” of the segregationists he worked with at the beginning of his time in the Senate.
