(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Juan Williams, a columnist for The Hill (best known, perhaps, for his role as the longtime resident liberal on Fox News’s The Five), received a fact check from Twitter after publishing an piece on Monday that declared President Joe Biden to be the nation’s “third black president.”
The social-media platform later appeared to have taken down the community note offering additional context for the Oct. 9 column.
Joe Biden is our third Black president (@TheHillOpinion) https://t.co/pK89e2mUGz pic.twitter.com/vkbU0d3efI
— The Hill (@thehill) October 9, 2023
Originally, the note explained to users that “Barack Obama was the first Black American President of the United States of America,” citing as its source an article from National Georgraphic.
Obama “was elected in 2008 and served from 2009-2017 as the 44th,” the note added. “There has not been another Black President in America elected to office since then. Joe Biden is white.”
Williams’s column made reference to novelist Toni Morrison’s claim that former President Bill Clinton was the nation’s “first black president,” due to the perception that Clinton exhibited a unique empathy toward black people and had a more laid-back sensibility than previous leaders.
Although Biden has had a notoriously troubled history of making overtly racist comments and supporting anti-black policies, Williams claimed that the current president met the same standard set by Morrison for Clinton in the 1990s.
He went on to explain that Biden earned his status as the “third black president” by nominating black people to high-ranking positions, such as Vice President Kamala Harris and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
He also cited the removal of Confederate leaders’ names from military bases—a law that was, in fact, passed prior to Biden’s inauguration after Congress overrode a veto from then-President Donald Trump.
Cutting student-loan debt and fighting alleged “voter suppression” also earned Biden some political correctness points, according to Williams.
However, critics contend that Biden’s attempts to declare loan amnesty unfairly saddle lower-class citizens who did not attend college with the educational expenses of those who did. Moreover, Democrats’ efforts to loosen voting procedures and verification methods effectively dillute the weight of all legitimate votes by making it easier to commit fraud.
Of course, Biden’s crowning achievement, per Williams, is simply not being Donald Trump.
“Biden often tells audiences they should not compare him to the Almighty but to the alternative,” Williams wrote.
“It looks likely that the alternative to Biden in [the] 2024 presidential race will be Trump and a GOP that is hostile to Black people and Black interests,” he continued. “It is not much of a choice.”
As Fox viewers are well aware, Williams is notorious for making arguments that are heavy on sentimental flourishes and short on substance.
Despite Williams’s wishful thinking, it appears that Trump—the current frontrunner for the 2024 GOP nomination—may, in fact, be gaining significant ground on Biden in winning black voters, thus sending left-wing idealogues like Williams into a tizzy.
Williams noted that the Biden campaign recently spent $25 million on a national radio advertisement to pander to both black and Latino groups.
The ad, in the form of a campaign jingle, spread the message that “Joe and Kamala are getting it done for us—and that’s the facts.”
This move followed polls that showed Trump’s approval ratings rising with black people after his mugshot in Georgia.
Williams insisted it was a lie. Yet, “Even if Trump’s claim is false, it is true that Black enthusiasm for Biden, especially among young Black voters, is sagging,” he conceded. “And that concern is the reason for the advertising campaign aimed at Black voters.”
However, at least one other black pundit saw Trump’s spike in appeal following his Fulton County indictment as a serious threat that could disrupt more than half a century of Democrats having taken minority votes for granted.
“If Trump stumps in the ’hood, leftists who call him ‘Racist!’ will beclown themselves,” wrote Deroy Murdock, a conservative columnist and regular Fox News contributor, in a September piece.
“… Trump should ask black voters a question that will crystallize their sense of betrayal at the hands of their morally bankrupt ‘benefactors,’” Murdock added. “What the hell have the Democrats done for you lately?”
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
