After Years of Overt Racism Trump Posts Video Claiming ‘Joe Biden Has a Racism Problem’ To Mark Kamala Harris Pick

Tommy ChristopherAug 12th, 2020, 8:58 am
 

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

In the midst of his overtly racist life and presidency, President Donald Trump greeted the news that Senator Kamala Harris will be our nation’s first Black woman on a major national ticket by posting a video that claims “Joe Biden has a racism problem.”

On Tuesday night, hours after former Vice President Biden announced his selection of Senator Harris as his running mate, Trump posted a video featuring six audio clips of Biden and one of Harris, set to horror movie trailer effects, over graphics that claimed “Joe Biden has a racism problem.”

The audio clips in question date back to 1973, and right up to his remarks last week about ideological diversity in the Black community. It’s a tiny collection of well-trod ground in which Biden has occasionally spoken clumsily or even offensively about race, like when he joked with radio host Charlamagne Tha God that if you can’t choose between Biden and Trump, “You ain’t black.”

One clip was of Biden, in 2012, telling supporters in Virginia that Republicans “want to put y’all back in chains,” which is more an accusation of racism against Republicans than anything.

Another clip was a snippet from a speech in Iowa in which Biden said “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids,” but omitted the remainder of the sentence: “Wealthy kids. Black kids. Asian kids.”

Two of the clips were from the same 1973 recording, in which Biden said “I think the two party system is good for the south, and good for the Negro, good for the black in the south,” and said of his southern Senate colleagues “Other than the fact that they still call me boy, I think they’ve changed their minds a bit.”

The term “Negro” was still common at the time — it was included in the question Biden was asked — as The Washington Post pointed out when Fox News decided to bleep it on the air earlier this year, and both Biden and the late Senator Ted Kennedy have spoken about how segregationist then-Senator James Eastland would call them “boy” instead of “Senator.”

Speaking of Eastland, it also includes audio of Sen. Harris criticizing Biden at a debate for praising segregationists like Eastland, whose friendship Biden has spoken of repeatedly over the years as an example of civility.

And finally, the video includes Biden’s infamous 2007 remark about then-Senator Barack Obama, of whom Biden said “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

At a debate that year, Biden was asked about that remark and others, and following his answer, Obama volunteered a defense of Biden on his own.

“I’ve worked with Joe Biden, I’ve seen his leadership, I have absolutely no doubt about what is in his heart, and the commitment that he has made with respect to racial equality in this country,” Obama said.

“I will provide some testimony, as they say in church, that Joe is on the right side of the issues and is fighting every day for a better America,” Obama added.

Most of the comments in the video are well-known and well-trod, and even set to Tobe Hooper fanfic trappings and presented in the least charitable context, they don’t amount to much. But they are a sign of panic from a candidate whose entire political career is built on racism, and whose current overtly racist campaign is failing.

In fact, Trump underscored that racism and failure by following his pinned tweet with an attack on a (different) Black U.S. senator and a boast about upholding segregation.

“The ‘suburban housewife’ will be voting for me. They want safety & are thrilled that I ended the long running program where low income housing would invade their neighborhood. Biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with Corey Booker in charge!” Trump wrote, misspelling Senator Cory Booker’s name.

The juxtaposition is neat, but Trump has been running on this latest iteration of the Southern Strategy for several weeks, with ever-increasing desperation. And in case anyone needed to be reminded, Morning Joe put together a mini-supercut of Trump’s racist remarks that was hardly comprehensive, and much more recent.

You could fill hours of meme videos with Trump’s barely-coded or completely uncoded racist remarks, but you wouldn’t have to. Everyone already knows this. His supporters delight in trolling the majority of Americans who believe this by insisting that the racist things he says aren’t actually racist, but even they know he says them.

So the object here is not to beat Joe Biden on the issue of race, but to try and neutralize it by smearing Biden. It’s nothing new.

But the timing and the clumsiness of the effort indicate that Trump is keenly aware of the coalition Biden and Harris have just mobilized in a war for the soul of our nation that he is already losing badly.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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