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Biden Apologizes For Calling Clinton Impeachment A ‘Lynching’ After Blasting Trump Over ‘Lynching’ Comments

   DailyWire.com
Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden lays out his economic policy plan to help rebuild the middle class during a campaign stop at the Scranton Cultural Center on October 23, 2019 in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Rick Loomis/Getty Images

Democrats on Tuesday spent most of the day excoriating President Donald Trump for calling the impeachment inquiry against him “a lynching.” Former Vice President and current Democrat 2020 presidential nominee Joe Biden joined in the criticism, scolding Trump for referencing America’s “dark, shameful history with lynching” and calling the comparison “abhorrent” and “despicable.”

But as The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported, Biden had a different view of that exact comparison when President Bill Clinton, a fellow Democrat, was the one getting impeached.

Back in 1998, during an interview on CNN, Biden described the impeachment of Clinton as a “partisan lynching.”

“Even if the President should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard, the very high bar, that was set by the founders as to what constituted an impeachable offense,” Biden said at the time.

After this video surfaced, Biden tweeted a half-hearted apology for his decades-old remarks.

“This wasn’t the right word to use and I’m sorry about that,” Biden wrote. “Trump on the other hand chose his words deliberately today in his use of the word lynching and continues to stoke racial divides in this country daily.”

Biden is apparently claiming he did not choose his words carefully in 1998. He is also imparting a negative motive onto Trump’s comments while claiming his motive was pure. This is a common partisan tactic.

It is also not the first time Biden has apologized for his comments in the 1990s. Biden practically began his presidential campaign by apologizing to Anita Hill for the way her accusations against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were handled. In 1998, Biden apparently told former Sen. Arlen Specter that “It was clear to me from the way she was answering the questions, she was lying.”

But when Biden was about to run for president, he called Hill beforehand to express “regret for what she endured,” according to his campaign. The call “did not go how he had hoped,” The New York Times reported.

Those who watched the Hill hearings in the 1990s saw the allegations for what they were, just as Biden had said in 1998. Hill claimed Thomas sexually harassed her, yet she followed him from job to job. Now, in the era of #MeToo, where every allegation must be believed, in large part due to Biden, the Hill issue would have become a problem for the former vice president’s campaign.

Biden also has previously apologized for drafting a landmark crime bill in the 1990s that helped reduce crime in the country. The bill is now considered racist, so Biden apologized for supporting it, even though he previously expressed support as recently as 2016.

Biden later, kind of, apologized for invading women’s personal spaces when interacting with them, like kissing them on the cheek or putting his hands on their shoulders without asking first. In a normal society this wouldn’t be an issue, but Biden has championed a broadened definition of sexual assault and harassment that would include his own behaviors. As Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro noted after Biden made several apologies for policies he supported decades ago:

Amazingly, though, all of the things for which Biden is apologizing are things for which he should not be apologizing. The early 1990s saw a spike in crime that largely affected minority communities; Hill was probably prevaricating; Biden’s invasion of personal space is awkward, but it was never harassment. But in our new political world, running means having to say you’re sorry for having a record at all. That’s why it was easier for Barack Obama to run than Hillary Clinton — and, in many ways, it was easier for Donald Trump to run than Sen. Ted Cruz. Having a record is a burden.

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