Biden Claims Trump Is The First Racist President
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, claimed Wednesday that there had never been a racist president in the U.S. until Donald Trump.
Biden made the claim at a virtual town hall on Wednesday after being asked about Trump’s decision to call the coronavirus the “China virus” or “Wuhan virus” whenever he speaks publicly about the pandemic, which places a stigma on Asian people.
“The way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening,” Biden said.
“No sitting president has ever done this,” Biden added. “Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has.”
The former vice president said that Trump pitted people against each other to “divide the country, divide people, not pull them together.”
Though Trump is known for making racist remarks, provoking racial tension in the country and attacking people of color, he is not the first racist elected to the White House.
There were a number of presidents who either owned slaves, held racist views or were overtly racist.
Many of the early American presidents owned slaves, including George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
President Andrew Jackson, also a slave owner, would order “harsh, even brutal punishment for enslaved people who disobeyed orders,” according to the White House Historical Association. Jackson was also responsible for the Indian Removal Act, which forced Native Americans off their tribal lands in the South so white settlers could grow cotton. The expulsion led to the infamous “Trail of Tears.”
In July 2019, a historian uncovered a recording of Ronald Reagan calling African delegates of the United Nations “monkeys” during a phone call with President Richard Nixon in 1971. Reagan was the governor of...
