“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg on Thursday defended former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic front-runner, for invoking his past working relationships with two segregationist senators as an example of “civility.”
Goldberg pointed out that she grew up in the era of segregation.
{mosads}“A lot of these guys voted ‘no’ on the Civil Rights Act,” she said. “Some of them were former klansmen. This is the world as it was. This is the world as it was, and that’s why LBJ had to beat up people to get them to notice us enough to give us the right to vote, OK?”
“You have to work with people you don’t like,” Goldberg added.
Goldberg then responded to other White House hopefuls, like Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who have called on Biden to apologize.
“Beat him … beat Biden in the debates, you know,” she said. “If you can beat him, beat him. Don’t try to make him out a racist. You don’t like some of the stuff he has done, say that, but you can’t call the dude a racist.”
“He sat for eight years with a black guy. Did he have a noose in the background? Come on. Come on!”
Biden has faced mounting criticism over the last two days after invoking former Sens. James Eastland (D-Miss.) and Herman Talmadge (D-Ga.) during a speech at a fundraiser Tuesday night.
The former Delaware senator cited his ability to work with the segregationists as an example of “civility” that no longer exists in Congress, pointing out that Eastland never called him “boy.”