On Wednesday, presidential candidate Joe Biden called United States President Donald Trump, the first racist elected president in what is considered to be his sharpest attack of the Republican since their race.
US Presidential war
Biden said the statement during a roundtable discussion that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) attended. The Democrat stated that Trump was engaged in the spread of racism in dealing with the citizens and criticized them by their skin color and national origin and said they were disgusting.
According to Fox News, Biden continued to note that no elected president has ever done what Trump managed to accomplish. The Democrat stressed that history had seen racists, some of which have tried to become US president and said Trump was the first successful one.
Since the beginning of his campaign, the former vice president has targeted Trump for his racism. In April of last year in a video where he announced his candidacy, Biden focused on Trump's response to the 2017 violent white supremacist rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Biden cited the US president's comments, including the one where the Republican said that there were fine people on both sides of the rally. The former vice president said those words marked a moral equivalence between the people who were fighting for and against hate.
Historically, however, there have been several leaders who were openly racist, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and several others. In 2017, the History Channel wrote 12 former US presidents owned slaves, eight of which while in office, according to Business Insider.
The presidential candidate stated it was the moment he knew the threat eyeing the country was unlike any he has ever seen before in his life.
Biden called Trump's tweets completely racist as he was condemning the Republican's previous posts of ordering the four freshmen progressive congresswoman of color who were collectively known as "The Squad" to go back to their countries which he called "corrupt" last month.
Additionally, last month, Biden noted Trump's racist attacks amid the coronavirus pandemic at an Asian American and Pacific Islander town hall. The Republican president has continued to dub the COVID-19 as the "China virus" or the "kung flu," as reported by Politico.
Rebuking the claims
Biden has frequently called on Trump's racist methods and statements. The Republican had occasionally come under fire of widespread criticism for his words, including when he called populations that had black majority as "shit-hole countries," while also denying travel access to multiple Muslim-majority countries.
Fueling the flames, Trump frequently gave nicknames to his Democratic oppositions, including Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, who he called "Pocahontas."
On the other hand, the White House has denied the allegations that Trump was a racist. In a Wednesday briefing, the Republican president replied to Biden's comments by saying he is the first United States president to have done plenty to support Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in history.
Trump also stressed that he had done so much more for the black community than anyone ever has, citing Abraham Lincoln as a possible exception to the statement. The Republican president also noted nobody had come close to the support he has given.
