Former Vice President suggested Thursday that voters in Macomb County, Michigan, abandoned the Democratic Party to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 because they are racist.
In an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN, Biden said that some voters felt “taken for granted,” and speculated that they responded to Trump using a “dog whistle” on race.
From the CNN transcript (emphasis added):
TAPPER: Let’s turn to the 2020 race, and specifically the fact that we’re in Macomb County, Michigan, right now.
This is a county that President Obama and you carried twice, and then President Trump carried by 12 percentage points in 2016.
You’re a son of Scranton. You’re somebody who likes to talk about working class, the middle class. Why do you think so many of these folks turned against the Democratic Party in 2016?
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Well, look, I think, number one, a lot of it was taken for granted.
When we were in, I spent a lot of in Macomb County, a lot of time in Detroit. I was given the responsibility of getting it out of its bankruptcy and getting it on its feet. I was the guy that was asked, in the Recovery Act, to make sure we made sure we were in a situation where we saved General Motors and Chrysler.
I come from Claymont. You know Claymont. You’re a Philly guy. Claymont’s a working-class neighborhood. It used to be — have 6,000 steelworkers in Claymont. It shut down, Worth Steel.
But the point is that I think it was the feeling that they were taken for granted. I don’t know that for a fact. And I think that he used that dog whistle on race. Now it’s a bullhorn.
And I think that — look, the neighbors I come from, and I think, presumptuously to say, you come from, people don’t want a handout. They just want a fighting chance: Just give me a shot. I have been looking for a shot.
Biden went on to claim that Trump had “decimated” jobs in the county.
In June, Biden claimed that “10 to 15 percent” of Americans — i.e. some 30 to 45 million citizens — are “not very good people,” implying that they are racists.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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