Not a Joke: Biden Called 'Third Black President' in The Hill Opinion Piece
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
I’m occasionally reminded that pseudo-journalist Juan Williams isn’t retired yet, and it’s never in a particularly good way.
In case you’ve forgotten — and I try to, believe you me — Williams has either worked for or been published in the gamut of American media: CNN, Fox News, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, The New York Times, etc., etc. If you can name it, it’s regrettably likely Williams has been involved with it.
One of his more troublesome relationships has been with The Hill, an otherwise respectable publication that still sees fit to publish him even after he landed it in hot water a decade ago with a piece that just so happened to blatantly plagiarize a report from the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank.
At the time, Williams told Salon that the plagiarized portions were the fault of a researcher and had nothing to do with him.
However, no amanuensis, no matter how dim, can possibly be blamed for Williams’ opinion piece Oct. 9 in the same publication that bore this uproarious, self-satirizing headline: “Joe Biden is our third Black president.”
Your third black president, America!
.@JoeBiden: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” @cthagod: “It don’t have nothing to do with Trump, it has to do with the fact — I want something for my community.” @breakfastclubam pic.twitter.com/endvWnOIV2
— America Rising (@AmericaRising) May 22, 2020
Yes, your third black president, America!
“Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
— Joe Biden, three years ago today pic.twitter.com/1B4S1zp0BC
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 8, 2022
Again, your third black president, America!
Jim Crow Joe Biden. Calling LL Cool J, a little boy. Tony, the man this is a Jim Crow democrat. and you will find a lot of Democrats make an excuse for this ignorant racist Democrat pic.twitter.com/H29Ae9H3hZ
— Don Salmon (@dijoni) September 24, 2023
But, seriously, maybe Juan Williams can convince me that this fellow — who once bragged about the era of “civility” in Washington, back when he could work with openly racist Dixiecrats such as former Mississippi Sen. James Eastland, a proud segregationist known to complain about race “mongrelization” while speaking in Congress — is our third black president.
Williams began the piece by acknowledging that “the first black president” was a moniker applied to William Jefferson Clinton by black novelist Toni Morrison.
It would be another eight years after Clinton left office until an actual black president, Barack Obama, took the White House, but Williams insisted that “Morrison’s memorable one-liner still gets laughs. It was a smart way to say that Clinton broke new ground by elevating Black leaders and policies that helped Black people.”
Actually, if Williams had bothered reading anything from liberal media in the last 10 years, Clinton’s presidency is remembered quite a bit less fondly by the left — and particularly black activists — now than it was back then, with progressives blaming him for all sorts of “racist” policies such as the 1994 crime bill he signed, which led to “mass incarceration” of black people, or a 1996 welfare reform bill that lefties say didn’t work.
But never mind — because former President Donald Trump, the leading 2024 GOP candidate, is worse and, as Williams noted, “Biden’s 2024 campaign is worried about getting Black voters to the polls.”
“Last week, the Biden campaign put $25 million into a radio advertising campaign to pump up enthusiasm among Black and Latino voters with [the] message ‘Joe and Kamala are getting it done for us — and that’s the facts,'” he wrote.
“This comes after former President Trump made the absurd, provably false claim to talk radio host Hugh Hewitt last month that polls show his support among Blacks has ‘gone up four of five times’ since he was indicted for election interference in Georgia and police took his mugshot,” Williams said.
“Even if Trump’s claim is false, it is true that Black enthusiasm for Biden, especially among young Black voters, is sagging,” he wrote. “And that concern is the reason for the advertising campaign aimed at Black voters.”
So, what’s the proof that Biden is our “third black president”? Basically that there are more black members of Congress than there used to be, that he’s nominated black people to prominent positions (such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown) and that he took the names of Confederate figures off of military bases — you know, that very critical work in stopping “systemic racism.”
Williams’ other arguments are specious at best.
Example: “Biden has achieved the lowest Black unemployment rate on record.” Yes, and previously that record was held by Trump. That’s a function of an economy with healthy fundamentals that Biden inherited and has mostly wrecked, although unemployment has remained low.
Another example: “Last week he cut $9 billion more in student loan debt. He has fought to cut student loan burdens which disproportionately weigh on low-income students and a large share of Black students.”
Ah, yes, the “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids” argument — only applied to college students this time! Nice work there.
Yet another example: “Biden failed to get past GOP obstruction on police reform and voter suppression. But he took on Republican standing in the way of new laws to stop voter suppression. He bluntly asked them if they ‘want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?'”
That incendiary quote comparing Republicans to segregationists was part of a failed attempt to try and break a filibuster on Biden’s voter overhaul, which was basically an electoral gift to the Democrats disguised as, as Williams tried to pass it off as, “new laws to stop voter suppression.”
That “voter suppression” (really just election security) is overwhelmingly supported by the people supposedly “suppressed” by it — black voters — as well as the vast majority of Americans.
Williams arrives at the real argument at the close of the piece, however — which is that Biden is “America’s third black president” because he’s not Donald Trump.
“Biden has lived up to the pledge he made on the night when he declared victory in the presidential election. Standing next to Harris he told Black voters: ‘You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,'” he wrote. “Now, Biden often tells audiences they should not compare him to the Almighty but to the alternative.
“It looks likely that the alternative to Biden in [the] 2024 presidential race will be Trump and a GOP that is hostile to Black people and Black interests. It is not much of a choice.”
So, in other words, Biden is the third black president because the alternative is worse, at least to a black liberal commentator.
Or — and I hate to repeat myself, but — in the words of Joe Biden himself:
.@JoeBiden: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” @cthagod: “It don’t have nothing to do with Trump, it has to do with the fact — I want something for my community.” @breakfastclubam pic.twitter.com/endvWnOIV2
— America Rising (@AmericaRising) May 22, 2020
Now, according to Juan Williams, not only do you not know if you’re black if you’re considering voting for Trump, but Joe Biden is blacker than you are!
That’s really the only thing I can conclude from a misleading piece that makes a big claim up front but then does little to back it up other than to say Biden has appointed or nominated black people to key positions and to cite misleading statistics to say that Biden is good for black people, in the face of what appears to be waning support among black voters.
Fantastic. Please stop reminding me you aren’t retired yet, Mr. Williams. It so seldom ends well for you.
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