Joe Biden gives baffling answer about record players and Venezuela when asked about past comments on race

Joe Biden raised eyebrows in the third Democratic debate with a baffling answer to a question about his controversial record on race.

The former vice president was asked about his past comments on slavery and reparations from 1975, when he said:

I’d be damned if I feel responsible to pay for something that happened 300 years ago.

In response to the question of what responsibility do Americans have to “repair the legacy of slavery” in the US, Biden went off on a bizarre tangent about record players and Venezuela…

He began by talking about institutional segregation and the need to spend more on poor schools.

Then it all went off track…

Biden said:

We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they don’t want to help, they don’t know quite what to do… play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the — make sure that kids hear words, a kid coming from a very poor school — a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there.

And when a moderator tried to cut him off to move onto another candidate, he kept going:

No, I’m going to go like the rest of them do, twice over. Because here’s the deal. The deal is that we’ve got this a little backwards. 

And by the way, in Venezuela, we should be allowing people to come here from Venezuela. I know Maduro. I’ve confronted Maduro. 

Number two: You talk about the need to do something in Latin America. I’m the guy that came up with $740m, to see to it those three countries, in fact, changed their system so people don’t have the chance to leave.

You’re acting like we just discovered this yesterday. Thank you very much.

It’s unclear if “make sure that kids hear words” is an official part of Biden’s education policy…

So ignoring the fact that that’s a ridiculous way to answer anything, it’s worrying that Biden turned a question about racial inequality into a question about parental responsibility.

And of course, there’s another problem - why does he think everyone still uses record players?

In other Biden news - the former VP once again referred to one of his presidential rivals as the president last night, when he mistakenly called Bernie Sanders “president”.

During the second Democratic debate, Biden also accidentally called Cory Booker the president before correcting himself and calling him the “future president”.

It's been another bad day for everyone who wants to claim Joe Biden is the most "electable" candidate...

HT: Vox

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