Biden: Trump Is Playing a ‘Dangerous Game’ With His Divisive Rhetoric

 

Joe Biden said today President Donald Trump is playing a “dangerous game” with his dog-whistle rhetoric.

In an interview airing on CNN tonight, Anderson Cooper spoke to Biden about the president’s rhetoric and the idea that it’s “a dog whistle” to white nationalists.

“This is a president who has said things no other president has said since Andrew Jackson. Nobody said anything like the things he’s saying,” Biden responded. “And the idea that this is contribute to or legitimate or make it more rational for people to think that we, in fact, can now speak out and speak out and be more straightforward and make this an issue, we’ve been through this before. We went through this before in the ‘20s with the Ku Klux Klan and 50,000 people walking down Pennsylvania Avenue in pointed hats and robes because they decided they didn’t want Catholics coming into the country.”

Biden said it’s a trait used by “charlatans.”

“If that is the case,” Cooper said, “it is a very dangerous game that he’s playing?”

“Oh, no, there is no question it is a dangerous game,” Biden said. “There is no question that his rhetoric has contributed to at a minimum — at a minimum — of dumbing down the way in which we as a society talk about one another.”

You can watch above, via CNN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!

Tags:

Josh Feldman is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: josh@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @feldmaniac