Joe Biden says '10-15%' of Americans 'are just not very good people'

Former vice-president Joe Biden has said “probably anywhere from 10% to 15%” of Americans “are just not very good people”.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who is known for his verbal gaffes, also said the “vast majority of the people are decent”. But his political opponents and the media swiftly seized on his comments.

Biden was speaking on Thursday night, to the actor Don Cheadle during an online discussion of racial relations. The US is in the grip of the worst civil unrest since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968, over the killing by police in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man.

“The words a president says matter,” Biden said, as he criticized Donald Trump’s response to the crisis. “When a president stands up and divides people all the time you’re going to get the worst of us to come out.

He then added: “Do we really think this is as good as we can be as a nation? I don’t think the vast majority of people think that. There are probably anywhere from 10% to 15% of the people out there that are just not very good people, but that’s not who we are.

“The vast majority of the people are decent, and we have to appeal to that and we have to unite people – bring them together. Bring them together.”

Biden’s words echoed Hillary Clinton, the Democrat beaten by Trump in 2016, who famously said a “big basket” of the Republican’s supporters were “deplorables … the racists and the haters and the people who are drawn because they think he can somehow restore an America that no longer exists”.

Two weeks ago, the Trump campaign seized on a comment Biden made to an African American radio host. Biden said then that if black voters “have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”. He apologised.

On Friday morning, the Trump campaign Twitter account was using footage of the Cheadle conversation to attack Biden.

Some observers also compared Biden’s “10% to 15%” remark to a costly and to some racially loaded Mitt Romney gaffe in 2012. The Republican nominee said then 47% of voters “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims” would back Barack Obama “no matter what”.

Trump’s own reaction to unrest over the death of George Floyd has attracted fierce and widespread criticism.

The president has offered sympathy to Floyd’s family and peaceful protesters. But he has also sought to exploit the unrest to portray himself as a “law and order” president; used divisive and racially loaded language; threatened to call in combat troops; urged governors to “dominate” demonstrators; and ordered an assault on peaceful protesters near the White House in order to stage a photo op holding a Bible.

At the White House on Friday, Trump told reporters: “Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying, ‘This is a great thing that’s happening for our country.’ This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This a great, great day in terms of equality.”

From Dover, Delaware, Biden responded: “George Floyd’s last words, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’, have echoed all across this nation and quite frankly around the world.

“For the president to try to put any other words in the mouth of George Floyd, I frankly think is despicable.”

Trump also has a long history of racial and divisive rhetoric aimed at African Americans, Muslims, Mexicans and more. In 2017, he memorably said there had been “very fine people on both sides” of a white nationalist rally in Virginia which led to the murder of a counter-protester.

That history is in stark contrast to Biden’s remarks to Cheadle.

He could not know, he said, what racial discrimination felt like.

“I’m a white man,” he said. “I think I understand but I can’t feel it. I feel it but I don’t know what it’s like to be a black man walking down the street and be accosted, or to be arrested or, God forbid, something worse.”

He also warned: “We can’t allow the protesting to overshadow the purpose of the protest. So there’s going to be a lot of folks that are going to want to cause trouble. Some cops, but some folks too.”

“Hate didn’t begin with Donald Trump,” Biden said. “It’s not going to end with him. The history of our country is not a fairytale, it doesn’t guarantee a happy ending, but as I said earlier, we’re in a battle for the soul of this nation. It’s been a constant push and pull for the last 200 years.

“I thought we had made enormous progress when we elected an African American president, I thought things had really changed. I thought you could defeat hate, you could kill hate. But the point is, you can’t.

“Hate only hides, and if you breathe any oxygen into that hate, it comes alive again.”