Senior Joe Biden campaign adviser Symone Sanders asserted Friday that the former Vice President’s “you ain’t black” gaffe on The Breakfast Club was actually a joke.
“Vice President Biden spent his career fighting alongside and for the African American community. He won his party’s nomination by earning every vote and meeting people where they are and that’s exactly what he intends to do this November,” Sanders wrote on social media:
“The comments made at the end of the Breakfast Club interview were in jest, but let’s be clear about what the VP was saying: he was making the distinction that he would put his record with the African American community up against Trump’s any day. Period,” she added.
Earlier Friday, Biden declared that if black Americans are unsure whether to support him over President Donald Trump in the November election, “then you ain’t black.”
The presumptive Democrat nominee made the unsolicited racially-charged comment as he finished his virtual interview with Charlamagne.
“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” he told the radio host, not in response to any question, but to the host’s statement: “It’s a long way until November, we’ve got more questions”:
“It don’t have nothing to do with Trump, it has to do with the fact — I want something for my community,” the host responded.
“I’m not acknowledging anybody who is being considered, but I guarantee you: There are multiple black women being considered. Multiple,” the former vice president said.
Previously, Charlamagne has criticized Biden for refusing to appear on The Breakfast Club as the Democrat primary unfolded. In March, the radio host said he has “no idea” why the former vice president wouldn’t join him for a discussion about his decades-long record, telling MSNBC: “Joe Biden owes black people his political life. You know what I’m saying? So don’t disrespect that base by not showing up, especially when, you know, all your other former opponents did.”
“Black people saved his life the past couple of weeks,” he added, referring to the former vice president’s primary election victory in South Carolina. “His campaign would be dead if it wasn’t for our O.G. Jim Clyburn in South Carolina endorsing him, and all those black voters in the South going out and voting for him. Plus, you were the vice president for the first black president. You, in particular, definitely need a black agenda.”
In September, Charlamagne ripped Biden for offering to send a campaign surrogate instead of sitting down for an interview with the radio host, stating that the move by the candidate showed “white entitlement and privilege.”
“Joe Biden has offered to send his surrogate, so that tells me a lot about what Joe Biden thinks about our audience. I think Joe Biden might be suffering from that same white entitlement and privilege and ego where he’s just that old school white male who feels like ‘hey man, they need me, I don’t need them or I’ve got them already.’ That’s not respect,” he told CNN.
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