Joe Biden asserted at a Florida fundraiser that a primary reason voters support President Trump is that he is a “racist.”
Americans who support Trump, the former vice president said on Monday, “like him because of the issues. They like him because of the tax cut, they like him because he’s a racist — whatever the reason is, they like him.”
During the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton drew criticism for calling “half” of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.” She also said many of Trump’s backers were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”
Biden added that although many of the president’s supporters are motivated by prejudice, there “are still a lot of people out there who are afraid” and even backed Barack Obama at one point.
“And they tend to be people who work working-class jobs. We talk about them as if they must all be racist. But these same folks voted for a black guy and an Irishman,” Biden said to the crowd of roughly 80 supporters, before knocking former presidential candidate Clinton for failing to “pay attention” to these voters in the 2016 election.
At the same fundraiser, Biden blamed his recent slump in a number of surveys on attacks he is incurring because he’s “not a socialist.”
Recent polls show Biden in a neck-to-neck battle with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for first place in the Democratic presidential primary. A RealClearPolitics average of nationwide primary polls shows Biden leading Warren by just over five points.
