Rep. Jim Clyburn, a black lawmaker from South Carolina, defended Joe Biden after the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said that African American voters who didn’t support him “ain’t black.”
Clyburn’s Tuesday defense of the former vice president is significant because his endorsement of Biden in the lead-up to the South Carolina primary led to a major turnout in Biden’s favor and prompted a strong victory that carried him through Super Tuesday and on to outlasting all of his opponents in the race.
As a Biden campaign staffer tried to end an interview on The Breakfast Club last week, the host, Charlamagne Tha God, said, “You can’t do that to black media,” to which Biden fired back, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” Clyburn pointed to President Trump, Biden’s 2020 opponent, as the reason the comment did not change his view of the former vice president.
“I cringed, no question about that,” the South Carolina Democrat told The View. “In this instance, Joe did not do as well as I had hoped in responding, but I will say this: I go about my business every day comparing Joe Biden to the alternative, not the almighty. He is not a perfect person. None of us are. So my decision now is to determine who I feel should be the next president of the United States, and I do that by comparing the candidates to each other, not to the almighty.”
“Look, he’s not a perfect person. All of us have misspoken,” Clyburn added. “I do it all the time. So we sometimes say things we do not really mean. They come out a little bit wrong, and that’s what happened here. I think all of us know Joe Biden. I’ve said that. I know him. And he knows me. He knows the African American community very well. I’ve done a lot of stuff with Joe Biden over the years, and I would not have supported him if I did not think he was best suited to be the next president of the United States. It’s just that simple.”
Biden later issued an apology for the comment after a senior adviser on his campaign argued that it was made “in jest.”
“I was much too cavalier. 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,” Biden said. “I’ve never, never, ever taken the African American community for granted.”
“No one should have to vote for any party, based on their race, their religion, their background. There are African Americans who think that Trump was worth voting for. I don’t think so,” he added. “I’m prepared to put my record against his. That was the bottom line, and it was really unfortunate. I shouldn’t have been so cavalier.”
