JOE BIDEN/RACISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “I made a mistake about something. I thought you could defeat hate. Hate only hides. It only hides. And when someone in authority breathes oxygen under that rock, it legitimizes those folks to come on out, come out in front of the rocks…
I saw those people coming out of Charlottesville, carrying torches, literally torches coming out of the fields… Their veins bulging, their hateful speech, chanting the same antisemitic bile that was chanting in the streets of Germany in the 30s. On top of that, accompanied by white supremacists, Klu Klux Klan. A young woman was killed protesting those folks.
And the president of United States was asked. He was asked, ‘What do you think?’ And he said something no president’s ever, ever said. He said, ‘There are very fine people on both sides.’ No president has ever said anything like that. The generic point I’m making is not all his fault, but it legitimizes. It legitimizes the dark side of human nature.
And what it did though, it also exposed what had not been paid enough attention to, the underlying racism that is institutionalized in the United States still exists, has existed for 400 years.”
-Joe Biden, “Joe Biden Delivers Remarks in Kenosha, Wisconsin,” c-span.org, Sep. 3, 2020