Former Vice President’s past comes back to haunt him
Former Vice President Joe Biden said in 1993 that a pro-Confederacy group was made up of “many fine people,” despite launching 2020 bid attacking President Donald Trump for comparable phrasing.
In April, Biden launched his presidential bid attacking Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 Charlottesville Virginia, white supremacist rally.
Trump said at the time there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Biden stated the remarks showed there was a “battle … for the soul of this nation.”
But in 1993, Biden, then a senator for Delaware, said that the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) was made up of “many fine people.”
The UDC is a group of southern women who have raised numerous Confederate monuments since the group’s beginning.
The UDC put up a monument commemorating the Ku Klux Klan in 1926 in North Carolina, The Daily Beast reported.
Former Sen. Howell Heflin described how his family’s background was “deeply rooted in the Confederacy” in a speech.
Biden praised this speech:
“Acknowledging that it was time to change and yield to a position that Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun raised on the Senate floor, not granting a federal charter to an organization made up of many fine people who continue to display the Confederate flag as a symbol.”
Biden seemingly agreed that the proposal should not move forward.
VIDEO: Biden Points Finger at Reporter’s Face After Being Asked a Difficult Question
READ MORE: https://t.co/sJ83piqiz3— Neon Nettle (@NeonNettle) December 10, 2019
The former Vice president’s comments came after former Illinois Democratic Sen. Moseley-Braun, the only black member at the time, gave a speech about the Confederate flag.
As a result of her speech, the Senate reversed its previous vote and killed a proposal about renewing a patent for the insignia of the UDC.
The patent featured the Confederate flag in a wreath, The Washington Post reported in 1993.
Moseley-Braun argued the flag symbolized something different for those descended from slavery.
The symbol of the Confederate flag “is something that has no place in our modern times … no place in this body … no place in our society,” she said, according to WaPo.