PresidentDonald Trumpthis week used Twitter (his favorite social media platform) to criticize former Vice PresidentJoe Biden(one of his favorite targets) over Biden’s support of a controversial 1994 federal crime bill.
Twitter users wasted no time in criticizing Trump right back.
On Sunday Trump, 72,tried to draw a clear lineseparating himself from Biden, who was a major proponent of the ’94 bill that has since become anathema in many Democratic circles.
Controversial even when it first became law, the ’94 bill has continued to be the subject of debate.
Former President Bill Clinton, who signed the bill into law, expressed regret for its long-term effects in 2015.
“The good news is we had the biggest drop in crime in history. The bad news is we had a lot people who were locked up, who were minor actors, for way too long,” he said,according to CNN. Biden hasalso saidthere were some flaws in the bill, particularly with its drug sentences, but that it did not drive an increase in incarceration nationwide.
On Twitter Trumparguedthat Biden’s support for the bill, plus Trump’s support of a bipartisan effort to reform the criminal justice system, meant he should receive the support of black voters rather than Biden in next year’s election.
But Trump quickly got a wave of backlash from other Twitter users who noted his hypocrisy given his history with race.
Among the examples cited were his notorious view on the “Central Park Five” case and spreading the birther conspiracy theory about former PresidentBarack Obama.
“President Trump is super-racist against African-Americans: housing discrimination, Central Park Five, Birtherism, attacking pregnant gold-star widow (and her congresswomen), degrading NFL players over fight for racial justice,” Economist David Rothschildreplied to Trump on Twitter.
President Trump speaks at a news conference on Monday during a state visit to Japan.KIYOSHI OTA/POOL/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
Rothschild reference of “housing discrimination” referred to a federal lawsuit against Trump and his father, in 1973, accusing “Trump Management for discriminating against blacks,”according to theTimes.
Trump denied the allegations and settled without admitting guilt. However,aTimesinvestigation published in 2016“uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties.”
Responding to Trump’s Biden attacks this week, another Twitter user brought up his history with the “Central Park Five,” when five black and Hispanic teenagers were falsely accused of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989.
Trump went as far as purchasing full-page ads in New York City newspapers that read “Bring Back The Death Penalty, Bring Back The Police.”
Discussing the case in aninterview with Larry Kingin 1989, Trump told him, “Maybe hate is what we need if we’re gonna get something done.”
After the men were exonerated in 2002 and the true culprit confessed to the crime, Trump wrote anop-ed in theNew York Daily Newsin 2014 where he criticized the city’s $41 million settlement with the men, calling it “a disgrace.”
“Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts,” he wrote. “These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.”
In 2016, while campaigning for president, Trump continued to claim the five were guilty of a crime that it was proven they did not commit.
“They admitted they were guilty,” he told CNN in a statement in October 2016. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous.”
Shewrote on Twitter: “After horrifying white supremacist march and killing of a woman you said ‘there were very fine people, on both sides.’ You demanded death sentence for the Central Park Five BEFORE their trial. I dont understand who would vote for you- a racist, a criminal, a liar and a fraud.”
With characteristic hyperbole, Trump said in 2018 he was “not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you,”according to theTimes.
Their prosecution and eventual exoneration will be chronicled in the upcoming Ana DuVernay Netflix series,When They See Us.
source: people.com
