President Trump showed Wednesday that Joseph R. Biden’s treatment of Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991 won’t be out of bounds in the presidential campaign.
In an interview with Fox News‘ Radio host Brian Kilmeade, Mr. Trump dismissed Mr. Biden’s claim that he would be a racial healer in the civil unrest that has gripped the country this week.
“Here’s the thing — he did a crime bill that was a disaster,” Mr. Trump said. “[And] it was a disaster the way he treated Clarence Thomas. A black man, a great Justice as it turns out. But go back to those horrible days, the way he treated Clarence Thomas — they write books about it.”
Mr. Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Justice Thomas’s confirmation hearing, in which Democrats heard testimony from Anita Hill, who accused the nominee of sexual harassment.
Last year, Mr. Biden apologized — to Ms. Hill. He told her in a private phone call that he regretted what she “endured” during the Thomas hearings.
Mr. Biden made the call 28 years later, just before he announced his candidacy for president.
The presumptive Democratic nominee also has been criticized for championing a crime bill in the 1990s that drastically increased prison terms for drug offenses, penalties that disproportionately affected minorities.
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