- Fri Oct 02, 2020 9:20 am
#127673
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's eulogy of the late Senator Robert Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan leader has been resurfaced by a pro-Trump group amid outrage over President Donald Trump's recent failure to explicitly condemn white supremacists.
A 35 second clip of the eulogy was viewed by nearly half a million times in the six hours after it was shared by the Twitter account of Students for Trump.
Biden, who has faced criticism in the past over comments he made about working with segregationists, gave the eulogy for Byrd at his funeral in 2010. "Bishop, Reverend Clergy, Mona and Marjorie, the entire Byrd family—if you didn't already know it, it's pretty clear the incredible esteem your father was held in," Biden said in his opening remarks.
Byrd, a member of the Democratic Party, served as a U.S. Senator from West Virginia for more than 50 years, from 1959 until his death. The politician's past was not without controversy, however.
In the early 1940s, Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, a designated hate group, The Washington Post reported in 2005. In his autobiography Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields, Byrd wrote that he viewed his leadership in the Klan as a helpful platform from which to launch his political career.
The late senator worked to minimize his direct involvement with the Klan, explaining it as a youthful indiscretion, according to the Post. He described his chapter of the hate organization as a fraternal group of elites who never engaged in or preached violence against Black people, the Post reported.
A 35 second clip of the eulogy was viewed by nearly half a million times in the six hours after it was shared by the Twitter account of Students for Trump.
Biden, who has faced criticism in the past over comments he made about working with segregationists, gave the eulogy for Byrd at his funeral in 2010. "Bishop, Reverend Clergy, Mona and Marjorie, the entire Byrd family—if you didn't already know it, it's pretty clear the incredible esteem your father was held in," Biden said in his opening remarks.
Byrd, a member of the Democratic Party, served as a U.S. Senator from West Virginia for more than 50 years, from 1959 until his death. The politician's past was not without controversy, however.
In the early 1940s, Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, a designated hate group, The Washington Post reported in 2005. In his autobiography Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields, Byrd wrote that he viewed his leadership in the Klan as a helpful platform from which to launch his political career.
The late senator worked to minimize his direct involvement with the Klan, explaining it as a youthful indiscretion, according to the Post. He described his chapter of the hate organization as a fraternal group of elites who never engaged in or preached violence against Black people, the Post reported.
- By Clownkicker