Presidential candidate Joe Biden said Lenard McKelvey, known as Charlamagne Tha God, had an attitude when he stirred controversy by saying black voters who consider supporting President Trump “ain’t black.”
During a CNN interview with network host Dana Bash, Biden said Charlamagne, who is black, was being a “wise guy” during their Breakfast Club discussion last week, which he said explained his behavior at the time.
“It was a mistake, No. 1. And I was smiling when he asked me the question. I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy with him. He was being a wise guy, and I responded in kind. I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake,” Biden said, later asserting he has never taken black voters for granted.
While appearing on the radio program The Breakfast Club last week, Biden took issue with Charlamagne’s request that the presumptive Democratic nominee come into the radio’s New York City studio for another interview, saying his co-hosts had more questions for him about his policy positions.
“We’ve got more questions,” Charlamagne said to Biden.
“You’ve got more questions? Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” to which Charlamagne tha God said: “It don’t have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact I want something for my community.”
Symone Sanders, a Biden spokeswoman, downplayed the remarks on social media after the former vice president’s appearance.
“The comments made at the end of the Breakfast Club interview were in jest, but let’s be clear about what the VP was saying: he was making the distinction that he would put his record with the African American community up against Trump’s any day. Period,” she tweeted.
Biden said he should not have been so “cavalier” in his language, but that has not stopped Charlamagne from tearing into the former vice president’s record on race.
In a Friday interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Charlamagne assigned blame to Biden for his role in passing drug and jail sentencing legislation in the 1990s during his time in the U.S. Senate.
“If you created legislation that hurt [the black community], then you have to create legislation that helps. It’s just that simple. Like, the whole system needs to be dismantled and rebuilt,” Charlamagne said. “He’s been a very intricate part of that system, whether you’re talking about in ’84 with mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers, or you’re talking about ’86 with crack laws that gave you more time for crack cocaine than powder cocaine, or you’re talking about the ’94 crime bill, like he really was one of those people on the front line when it came to the war on drugs and mass incarceration.”
Charlamagne said Biden would be a “fool” not to have a black woman as his vice presidential pick, saying it would be “suicide” for his campaign to consider Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is white.
