Donald Trump Suggests Joe Biden Is Racist Over 1994 Crime Bill & Twitter Users Are Quick To Respond
Donald Trump is getting backlash on social media for his own alleged racist past after suggesting that Joe Biden is racist for his involvement in 1994’s Crime Bill, which reportedly devastated the African American community.
As People reports, this week Donald Trump took to Twitter to broadly suggest that African Americans should reconsider voting for Joe Biden. In a series of tweets on Monday, Trump noted that Biden was at least partially responsible for the bill. In the first tweet, Trump noted that “Sleepy Joe” helped draft the bill and has declined to apologize. In the second tweet, Trump noted that he helped push through a Criminal Justice Reform bill, which has benefited the African American community, and that African Americans “will not be able to vote for” Biden because of that.
While the African American voting bloc is, in general, fiercely loyal to the Democratic Party, as The Economist reports, the middle 1990s saw a time when Democrats, including Biden as well as then-President Bill Clinton, pushed through legislation that purportedly haunts the black community to this day.
As Vox reports, Biden was instrumental in developing 1994’s Crime Bill, which, among other things, instituted so-called “Three Strikes” laws that locked up criminals for life upon their third felony conviction. That has resulted in mass incarceration of Americans, a situation which has disproportionately affected African Americans.
Joe Biden accuser to launch her own talk show https://t.co/Z5hRsti1Sc pic.twitter.com/b4XrQNy0dy
— The Hill (@thehill) May 29, 2019
Though Biden was indeed at least partially responsible for a law that supposedly devastated the African American community, Twitter reminded Trump that he (Trump) is hardly in a position to call anyone a racist.
Economist David Rothschild, for example, listed a litany of things Trump has said and/or done that could be interpreted as racist.
“President Trump is super-racist against African-Americans: housing discrimination, Central Park Five, Birtherism, attacking pregnant gold-star widow (and her congresswomen), degrading NFL players over fight for racial justice,” he tweeted.
As for “housing discrimination,” Rothschild appears to be referencing a case from the early 1970s in which the Justice Department sued Trump, his father Fred, and a Trump-owned management company for allegedly refusing to rent to African Americans, as NPR News reports. Trump tried to countersue the Justice Department for $100 million; the case was later settled out of court.
The “Central Park Five” incident refers to a 1989 case in which five African American youths were accused of raping a white woman in Central Park. As Esquire reports, Trump took out full-page ads in New York’s major newspapers calling for the death penalty to be brought back.
“I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them,” he said.
And after the men were exonerated and received a multi-million-dollar settlement, Trump called it a “disgrace.”
Trump has never apologized for his role in the case. Biden, similarly, has not apologized for his part in the 1994 Crime Bill.
