Hypocrisy: Biden Video Surfaces That Shows Him Calling Pro-Confederate Flag Folks 'Fine People'
Joe Biden doesn’t buy the theory that President Donald Trump wasn’t referring to white supremacists when he was talking about “very fine people” in the wake of the Charlottesville protests in 2017 — which was arguably a rhetorical low point of the Trump presidency but one that’s been endlessly misinterpreted.
In August, after a reporter from Breitbart mentioned that Trump had condemned the white supremacist marchers (and yes, he did), Biden went on the attack — describing the protesters as bigots with “veins bulging,” as Politico’s Natasha Korecki reported.
“No he did not, he walked out and he said — let’s get this straight — he said there were very fine people in both groups,” Biden said.
“They were chanting anti-Semitic slogans, carrying flags.”
.@JoeBiden rips into a man at the #IowaStateFair who claims he is misquoting Trump’s “very fine people” and the president did not call the Charlottesville marchers that pic.twitter.com/difCUZ4gEi
— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) August 8, 2019
In his campaign announcement earlier this year, Biden also listed Trump’s response to Charlottesville as one of the reasons he got into the race.
So, in other words, “very fine people on both sides” — no matter what the context — is going to be a rallying cry for the Biden campaign going forward in 2020. The only problem is that, as with so many other things, Biden has a history. And it’s not a good one.
In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was being confirmed to the Supreme Court when Joe Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the time, there was an issue — raised by Democratic Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois — with renewing the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s federal charter.
Democratic Sen. Howell Heflin of Alabama had given a speech on the matter, and Biden used the occasion to express his approval of Heflin’s words, as The Daily Wire reported.
“The senator made a very moving and eloquent speech, as a son of the Confederacy, acknowledging that it was time to change and yield to a position that Sen. Carol Moseley Braun raised on the Senate floor, not granting a federal charter to an organization made up of many fine people who continue to display the Confederate flag,” Biden said.
Trump’s 2020 campaign pointed out Biden’s hypocrisy on Twitter:
Joe Biden called the United Daughters Of The Confederacy “an organization made up of many fine people who continue to display the Confederate flag.” pic.twitter.com/uWRNUCU4sO
— Trump War Room (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TrumpWarRoom) December 8, 2019
In other words, Biden was against a federal charter for a group that continued to use the Confederate flag — but recognized there “many fine people” involved with the group who wanted to continued displaying the flag.
Now, granted. There were fewer “very fine people” at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville back in 2017. The rhetoric, however, is the same and about the same basic idea — that a symbol of the Confederate States of America can be repurposed in the post-Civil War period into something that isn’t redolent of hatred and of the antebellum South.
It’s also worth noting that when it came to praising segregationist politicians, Biden clearly had one up on Donald Trump, given his cooperation with men like James Eastland in late 1970s in order to kill potential federal busing regulations.
So, will Biden apologize? Probably not. After all, he believes Trump was saying this about white supremacists and that this is the only context we should be concerned about. It’s untrue, but Biden apparently thinks the context of Trump’s words shouldn’t concern us because — well, it’s Trump.
In both cases, they were talking about individuals who weren’t white supremacists. Trump, while he could have made that entire speech clearer, was obviously referring to people who were there to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee and who didn’t realize the white supremacist context of the event.
And yet people still didn’t get it:
And here is a sample of Trump’s very fine people pic.twitter.com/GoXe67Fqnj
— Stanbury Barth (@stanbury_barth) December 8, 2019
Biden used the same logic when referring to the Daughters of the Confederacy. And yet where does the media stand on that?
Judging by the coverage this unearthed clip has garnered, the establishment media doesn’t have a stand on this at all. And that’s the problem.
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