Nikki Haley, the Republican former governor of South Carolina and the former US ambassador to the United Nations, made the first speech of her 2024 presidential campaign on Wednesday.
Like many kickoff speeches, Haley’s address in Charleston was heavy on broad themes and light on the kind of specific claims that can be fact-checked. But she did make one particularly inflammatory accusation about President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Haley claimed that under Biden and Harris, “a self-loathing has swept our country.” She said, “Every day we’re told America is flawed, rotten, and full of hate. Joe and Kamala even say America is racist. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Facts First: Both Biden and Harris have explicitly said they do not think that America is itself “racist,” though both have also said that there continues to be “systemic racism” embedded in American institutions such as policing and the criminal justice system.
Biden and Harris were asked in April 2021 about an assertion from South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, that “America is not a racist country.”
They both agreed.
Biden said on NBC: “No, I don’t think the American people are racist. But I think after 400 years, African Americans have been left in a position where they’re so far behind the 8 ball in terms of education, health, in terms of opportunity.”
Biden added that he doesn’t think people “say, ‘I don’t want any Black person around me or living next to me.’” Rather, he said, it’s fact that “there used to be laws that said a Black person couldn’t live in that neighborhood.” He continued: “I don’t think America’s racist, but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow, and before that, slavery, have had a cost, and we have to deal with…
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