President Joe Biden accused his election rival, Donald Trump, of suppressing diversity on Friday as he intensified efforts to garner support from Black voters ahead of the upcoming November election.
Speaking at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, the 81-year-old Democrat criticized Trump and his allies for attempting to “erase history.”
“My predecessor and his extreme MAGA friends are now going after diversity, equity, and inclusion all across America,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. “They want a country for some, not for all.”
Biden also aimed the “extreme” US Supreme Court, which, with three justices appointed by Trump, has issued several controversial rulings on abortion, voting rights, and diversity.
This speech was part of a series of events this week commemorating the 70th anniversary of the US Supreme Court ruling that ended racial segregation in schools. These events also serve as a significant outreach effort to Black voters.
African American voters played a crucial role in Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020. Still, recent polls indicate that some of these voters are increasingly disillusioned with him ahead of the November rematch with the Republican.
On Thursday, Biden welcomed key figures and relatives of plaintiffs from the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case to the Oval Office, celebrating a landmark moment in the US civil rights movement.
Later on Friday, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — the first Black, South Asian, and female vice president in US history — were scheduled to meet with leaders from the “Divine Nine” historically Black college sororities and fraternities.
On Sunday, Biden will address graduating students at Morehouse College, a historically Black institution in Atlanta, Georgia, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. studied.
Following this, Biden will travel to Detroit to speak at the NAACP, the nation’s leading civil rights organization.
“We are meeting Black voters where they are,” Trey Baker, a senior advisor to the Biden campaign, said in an email. “After Donald Trump failed us, no administration has delivered for Black America like President Biden and Vice President Harris.”
