The only racist…

Biden thinks Trump is the first racist president.

Dude.

“We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has,” Trump’s Democratic challenger said, the Washington Post reports.

No he’s not.

The “peculiar institution” loomed large over the first few decades of American presidential history. Not only did enslaved laborers help build the White House all of the earliest presidents (except for John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams) owned enslaved people. George Washington kept some 300 bondsmen at his Mount Vernon plantation. Thomas Jefferson—despite once calling slavery an “assemblage of horrors”—owned at least 175 enslaved workers at one time. James MadisonJames Monroe and Andrew Jackson each kept several dozen enslaved workers, and Martin Van Buren owned one during his early career.

William Henry Harrison owned several inherited enslaved people before becoming president in 1841, while John Tyler and James K. Polk were both enslavers during their stints in office. Zachary Taylor, who served from 1849-1850, was the last chief executive to keep enslaved people while living in the White House. He owned some 150 enslaved workers on plantations in Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana.

And then there were the racists who didn’t own slaves.

I think it’s fair to say Trump is by far the most overt and explicit racist we’ve had in many years, but the only? Please.

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