Joe Biden Defends Non-Apology to Anita Hill: ‘I Don’t Think I Treated Her Badly’ During Hearings
Former Vice President Joe Biden appeared on The View today and discussed his conversation with Anita Hill, who publicly said she did not accept Biden’s recent non-apology apology for the mistreatment she faced during the Clarence Thomas nomination process.
Hill, who testified against Thomas over sexual harassment claims during his 1991 nomination, told the New York Times yesterday that Biden called her this month but she was not satisfied with his comments. “I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you,’” Hill said of Biden, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Thomas hearings.
After introducing Biden, co-host Joy Behar joked that the former Delaware senator is on “The View apology tour.” Behar went on to tell Biden that The View is his “opportunity, right now, to say you apologized, you were sorry. I think we could clean this up right now.”
“I’m not going to judge whether or not [my apology] was appropriate, whether she thought it was sufficient, but I said privately what I said publicly,” Biden responded. “I’m sorry she was treated the way she was treated, I wish we could have figured out a better way to get this thing done. I did everything in my power to do what I thought was within the rules to be able to stop things.”
He went on to credit Hill as “one of the reasons why we have the #MeToo movement,” the Violence Against Women Act, and women on the Senate Judiciary Committee. After being asked why it took so long for Biden to call Hill despite acknowledging her mistreatment publicly, he explained that “since had publicly apologized for the way she was treated” and “didn’t want to do — I didn’t want to, quote, ‘invade her space.'”
But after hearing that Hill expected a private apology, Biden said he talked to leading women advocates, some of which knew her, and asked if she would take his call.
“I think she wants you to say I’m sorry for the way I treated you,” Behar responded. “Not ‘the way you were treated.'”
“If you go back and look at what I said and I didn’t say, I don’t think I treated her badly,” he replied. “I took on her opposition.”
Biden also added that the nomination process needs a way to stop the “character assassinations” Republicans employed against Hill to push through the Thomas nomination.
As for Hill’s problem with the committee not having a woman testify to corroborate her sexual misconduct allegations, Biden said:
“We actually sent her a document to her it was signed. It said, ‘I want you to come, but if you don’t want to come, sign this and tell me it’s real.’ There is a document saying that. People will then say why didn’t you call her anyway? I thought the issue was to try to not — to make it clear that I believed Anita — excuse me — Dr. Hill. I believed what she was saying. What would happen if someone came and said I’m not going to say anything? That would guarantee this happened. Look, there were a lot of mistakes made across the board. For those, I apologize. We may have been able to conduct it better. I believed Dr. Hill from the beginning, from the beginning and I said it.”
As for Hill’s comments about her recent phone call with the former vice president, she said, “I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.”
“The focus on apology to me is one thing,” she said to the Times. “But he needs to give an apology to the other women and to the American public because we know now how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw. And not just women.”
Watch above, via ABC.
