CLAIM: Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed in a CNN town hall that President Donald has never condemned white supremacists.
VERDICT: FALSE. He has done so, many times.
At CNN’s town hall Thursday night, a retired police chief asked Biden how he would bring respect back to law enforcement and the military, and how he would bring the country together.
Biden responded by condemning violence “of any kind, no matter who it’s coming from,” then added that the president “has yet to condemn … the far-right and the white supremacists.”
That is false, and repeats a lie Biden has told before — also on CNN, and also in the presence of Anderson Cooper, who moderated Thursday night’s event and failed to correct him.
ABC News fact-checked Biden, and noted — commendably — that Trump condemned white supremacists after the Charlottesville riots of August 2017, which Biden has also lied about, as well as on other occasions:
Two days after violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 — after first equating violence from white supremacists with those protesting — Trump said, “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups.”
A month later, the president signed a congressional resolution condemning white supremacy.
In 2019, following shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Trump said, “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. ”
“These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul,” he added.
Biden also repeated several other lies in the course of his answer to the police chief, telling at least five lies in one answer.
He falsely claimed that Trump aide Kellyanne Conway had said that chaos is good for the Trump administration; that protesters in Lafayette Park were “peaceful“; that Trump had tear-gassed protesters so he could cross the park for a photo-op; and that Trump held a Bible upside-down at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
Biden never answered the retired police chief’s question.
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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