UNITED STATES—Former Vice President Joe Biden drew distinctions about the political diversity of American voting populations in an interview released Thursday, August 6.
The virtual interview featured journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
In responding to NPR journalist, Lulu Garcia-Navarro about how Biden would engage with Cuba if he were elected president, Biden noted, “By the way, what you all know but most people don’t know, unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things.”
He continued, “You got to Florida, you find a very different attitude about immigration in certain places than you do when you’re in Arizona. So it’s a very different, very diverse community.”
Biden later took to Twitter that same day to clarify his remarks, “Earlier today, I made some comments about diversity in the African American and Latino communities that I want to clarify. In no way did I mean to suggest the African American community is a monolith—not by identity, not on issues, not at all.”
One of Biden’s top advisers, Symone Sanders, commented, “The video circulation is conveniently cut to make this about racial diversity, but that’s not the case.”
On Twitter, President Donald Trump declared Biden’s Remarks, “Very insulting.” In a later tweet he also wrote, “Joe Biden just lost the entire African American community.”
In speaking with the New York Times, Antjuan Seawright, a Biden supporter and Democratic consultant in South Carolina, noted “People are going to use this, particularly Joe Biden’s adversaries. Even those who are not 100% on board with Joe Biden’s candidacy are going to look for reasons not to support him […] I know Joe Biden’s heart, and more importantly, he knows us […] I’m happy with who I think he’ll be as president on the issues that matter to our community.”
“This is no accident,” Trump’s re-election campaign spokesman, Dan Murtaugh, commented on Biden’s interview, “Now, he wants them all to agree that we all know that all black people think alike. It’s nuts.”
Biden’s latest interview controversy comes after a string of viral comments.
In May, Biden had to apologize for saying any voter who has “got a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump…ain’t black.” Hours later, on a call with U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce members, Biden declared, “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy.”
In another interview on August 5 with CBS News’s Errol Barnett, Biden pushed back on his decisions to take a cognitive test. In speaking with the Barnett he said, “Why the hell would I take a test?” If “you’re taking cocaine or not? Are you a junkie?”
Biden is still leading in the polls and is intending to announce his choice for a female running mate in early August.
