Pennsylvania swing voters blame Biden for feeding into the racism that erupted at Charlottesville
Some swing voters in Pennsylvania blame Joe Biden for the racism that erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia.
Those voters say Biden “twisted” President Donald Trump’s response to the Charlottesville rally that left one anti-fascist protester dead, and accused him of telling “a complete lie” about the event in a video kicking off his presidential campaign, reported Axios.
Biden accused the president of assigning a “moral equivalence” between white supremacists and their opponents in a video announcing his Democratic campaign, but some swing voters in his birth state agreed with Trump, who says the former vice president had twisted his words about “very fine people on both sides.”
“They’re sensationalizing the Democratic standpoint,” said 66-year-old Vince K., who voted for Barack Obama before backing Trump. “He’s making a greater issue out of a non-issue than what there should be because he figures it will feed the party and that’s why the party feeds him.”
Some of those Obama-to-Trump voters believe Biden intentionally mischaracterized Trump’s statements.
“They’re playing identity politics and that’s all that was about,” said 62-year-old David R. “I read the transcription: Trump said there’s good people on both sides … referring to the people that wanted to take down the statue of Robert E. Lee. So in my world that’s a complete lie.”
Some of the voters who took part in an Axios focus group blame Obama and Biden for the racism that’s attributed to Trump.
“I do believe that a lot of the prejudice came out during his administration with Obama,” said 55-year-old Laurie B. “It just infuriates me that that’s when the country started getting divided and now he wants to fix it.”
