Joe Biden’s presidential campaign addressed uproar about his remark that those who vote for President Trump are not black by saying it was just a joke.
“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,” senior adviser Symone Sanders said in a tweet on Friday.
The former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, 77, had a tense exchange on The Breakfast Club morning radio show about race issues earlier on Friday, including about marijuana legalization and the 1994 crime bill.
As a Biden staff member tried to end the interview, host Charlamagne Tha God said, “You can’t do that to black media.”
Biden explained that his wife had to do a show, and then he said: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
Trump allies condemned Biden’s remark, and a statement from Trump’s campaign called it “racist and dehumanizing.”
Sanders added, “Vice President Biden spent his career fighting alongside and for the African American community. He won his party’s nomination by earning every vote and meeting people where they are, and that’s exactly what he intends to do this November.”
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.
— Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) May 22, 2020
