Al Sharpton on Monday said that former Vice President Joe Biden needs to show Democrats that he is not like President Donald Trump and apologize for bragging about how civil segregationist Democrats were to him in the Senate.
Sharpton told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that Biden needs to understand that the controversy surrounding his comments are about “racism” and “people feeling decades of abuse” because Democrats, especially black Democrats, do not want “people that are going to be like Donald Trump.”
“And this is not about showing you’re tough, this is about showing that you’re sensitive and that you regard and respect the feelings of people that you want to govern. And that’s what we’re talking about,” Sharpton said. “Who is going to be the president? We do not mean if you’re going to have an alternative to Donald Trump, people that are going to be like Donald Trump rather than unlike him and say, you know, I can grow and I can learn that if I make a mistake, even if it’s unintentional, I can say that’s a mistake, I’m sorry if I hurt somebody there, but let’s move on and bring the country together in another direction.”
Biden last week praised former Sens. James Eastland (D-MS) and Herman Talmadge (D-GA), saying that Eastland called him “son” instead of “boy.”
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden reportedly said. “He never called me boy, he always called me son.”
After interviewing Biden over the weekend in South Carolina, Sharpton did not believe Biden sufficiently addressed the concerns about the “consequences” of the word “boy.”
Sharpton warned that if prominent black Democrats who are advising Biden—like former Congressional Black Caucus chair Cedric Richmond (D-LA) and Symone Sanders—do not help Biden understand why his comments were hurtful to “people that were raised by people that suffered at the hands of Eastland and others that he talked about,” Biden could end up losing the support of younger black voters.
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