Joe Biden: 'Poor Kids Are Just as Bright and Just as Talented as White Kids'

At a campaign stop in Iowa Thursday evening, Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden seemed to conflate “poor kids” with minority children, and proclaimed that they are “just as bright and talented” as the white kids.

Biden was speaking at the Asian & Latino Coalition Town Hall in Des Moines about the need to challenge students. “We have this notion that if you are poor, you cannot do it,” Biden said. “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” Realizing his gaffe, he quickly added, “wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids — no I really mean it.”

Joe Biden: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” pic.twitter.com/YhDSMnoRce

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 9, 2019

Joe Biden has a habit of putting his foot in his mouth — especially when it comes to matters of race, so this latest gaffe comes as no surprise.

To a mixed-race crowd in August of 2012, for instance, he said: “Romney wants to let the — he said in the first hundred days, he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, unchain Wall Street,” Mr. Biden said. “They’re going to put you all back in chains!”

In January of 2007, before he had been selected as Barack Obama’s choice for vice president, he said: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Also in 2007, Biden suggested that the reason schools in Iowa do better than schools in Washington, D.C., is because Iowa has a much smaller percentage of African Americans in their population.

This is a pattern.

Washington Post, 2007: “Biden also stumbled through a discourse on race and education, leaving the impression that he believed one reason so many Washington D.C. schools fail is the city’s high minority population.”https://t.co/D7bT3yL7Jp pic.twitter.com/FVrBL9BSiP

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 9, 2019