Biden Shreds Trump on Race at Black Business Roundtable: ‘The Grand Wizard Said This Is Why We Elected Him’

Former Vice President Joe Biden tore into President Donald Trump during a roundtable with black business leaders in Philadelphia, recounting some of Trump’s past remarks and saying Trump “gives oxygen” to racists.

During the event Thursday, Biden was asked to expand on his theme of restoring the “soul of the nation” in the context of recent events and the struggles of the city’s businesses.

After commenting briefly on his own working class background, Biden went in on Trump.

“From the moment he came down that escalator in his golden building, what did he start off saying? I’m going to see to it that we get rid of all those Mexican rapists,” Biden said. “That was the first thing he talked about.”

“Secondly, what did he do? He decided that he was going to pit us against one another based on race,” Biden continued. “When you saw those people in Charlottesville coming out of the fields carrying those torches, their veins bulging, and screeching that anti-semitic hate and bile. Saying, using the same phrases used in Germany in the 30s, the early 30s in Nazi Germany, accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan. The Grand wizard said ‘This is why we elected him.'”

“And then a young woman gets killed and he gets asked to comment on it, he said there were very fine people on both sides,” Biden said. “No president in the history of the United States of America has ever said anything remotely like that.”

“And so what I learned, coming out of the movement much much earlier as a kid is you think you can defeat hate. You can only make it hide. And when you give it oxygen, when a president speaks no matter how good or bad he is, people listen. And when he speaks and gives credibility to these racist,” Biden said, then paused to catch himself.

“…I’d better watch my language, [racist] folks out there, he breathes oxygen. They come out from under the rocks, and you’re seeing it. You’re seeing it all across the country,” Biden said.

Watch the clip above via PBS.