WTF? C’mon, Joe. Even with your history classes so many decades in the past, you must realize that is wrong. Hell, eight Presidents owned slaves while they were in the office of the presidency, and four others owned slaves at other times. Even the beloved FDR approved internment camps for Americans of Japanese heritage.
And then there were Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson, two flagrant, unapologetic racists.
Trump may be the worst one since Wilson, although he has some competition even there, but he’s certainly not the first, and given the looming presence of Ol’ Hickory, Trump doesn’t even have a good claim to be the worst.
I suppose Biden could have meant that Trump was the first REPUBLICAN president to be a racist. But I seem to recall reading that some less than PC language by Nixon was recorded on some of his infamous tapes. But saying Trump is the first racist elected president is quite a statement considering that Democratic Party organizations annual fundraising dinners are known as “Jefferson-Jackson Day” dinners, named of course after Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. I happen to believe Jefferson had some redeeming qualities, but Jackson was a vicious racist. When I was in school I was taught Woodrow Wilson was one of our greatest presidents. But the high school teacher that showed us Birth of a Nation in class neglected to provide us with the great Princeton historian’s review of the film. “It’s like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” My favorite part of the film was when the KKK came riding over the hill to save the innocent white people trapped in a cabin by rampaging African-Americans. Oh Woodrow Wilson also instituted segregation in Washington D.C. and the federal government for the first time. But if Trump was the first racist elected president, I guess Biden is saying that Wilson, Jackson, and those other slave owning presidents were really OK dudes.