Rep. Jim Clyburn Compares Joe Biden to Martin Luther King Jr.

LEMIRE: “On that, Donald Trump is going low day after day, and we’re seeing race play a big part of his attack line now against the vice president, questioning whether she is even black, suggesting that she just changed identities recently for political opportunism. Talk to us, if you will, how you see race playing a role in this campaign. We know Donald Trump previously had been trying to win over black voters. President Biden has been struggling a little bit with that group. Polls suggest the vice president is doing better. Where do you see things landing?”
Clyburn: “Well, you know, I think we make a mistake when we deny that race is an issue in this country. The country has been around now — in two years we’re gonna celebrate 250 years of our existence. Of course, we do know that in 1876, in the 100th year of the country’s finding, we had the most racialized election we ever had that led to Jim Crow, which stayed with us for another almost 100 years. So that’s an issue that we have to confront. We shouldn’t avoid it. I often reflect on Alexis de Tocqueville’s notion that we repair our faults and that’s what makes us great, not that we are more enlightened than any other nation, but because we’re always able to repair our faults. That’s what the Supreme Court was doing in 1954. That’s what the Congress was doing in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act, and that’s what we’re attempting to do now. Covid-19 opened up some fault lines in this country, and we are about repairing them. That’s what Joe Biden did. And I think that people are going to look at Joe Biden much the way we look at Martin Luther King, jr. When he said in his speech, ‘It does not matter how long you live, but how well you live.’ And I say the same thing about Joe Biden. He may not have had as long a presidency as he wanted to have, but I don’t think you’ll have any better of a presidency than he has had. That’s what we’ve got to get out to the American people. And I think Kamala Harris is going to build upon that. She was a part of that foundation. I mentioned earlier, when she got down to Memphis in her response to Dobbs, people don’t remember that when we got into a little bit of difficulty with France over that submarine deal, Joe Biden sent Kamala Harris to Paris and she came back with a great victory. That should tell the American people a whole lot about who she is, not just on the domestic front, but on the international front as well.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Democratic congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, thank you very much for being on the show this morning.”
Clyburn: “Thank you.”