Joe Biden on Thursday slammed President Donald Trump for “fanning the flames of racism” by using his presidency and re-election campaign to verbally attack immigrants and people of color.
“Donald Trump and his administration have pursued an all-out assault on Latino communities,” Biden said during a virtual event with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. “It started the moment he announced his presidency. Fanning the flames of fear and racism against Latinos.”
“From the moment he came down that golden escalator saying he was going to go after those Mexican rapists,” he said, recalling Trump’s infamous summer 2015 speech from Trump Tower in Manhattan.
“It’s baked into every aspect of how he’s governed,” Biden said, before listing off a series of moves and statements Trump has made that the former veep said prove Trump “has failed the Latino community time and time again.”
Biden cited Trump’s repeated attacks on Dreamers— young immigrants without permanent legal status— as well as what Biden called a “campaign of terror against immigrant communities” and his “neglect” of the people of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria destroyed parts of the island in 2017.
Thursday’s remarks came just days after he released a plan to empower the Latino community in the U.S.
The plan centers on five main goals: to invest in Latino economic mobility, to make “far-reaching” investments in ending health disparities by race, to expand access to high-quality education and tackle racial inequity in education, to combat hate crimes and gun violence and to “secure our values as a nation of immigrants.”
Adam Edelman
Adam Edelman is a political reporter for NBC News.