On Wednesday, former Vice President Joe Biden called President Donald Trump the first racist president in U.S. history.  

Biden claimed, "The way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they're from, is absolutely sickening.  No sitting president has ever done this, never, never, never." 

He further stated, "the way he pits people against one another is all designed to divide the country, divide people, not pull them together."  Charges of racism will dramatically increase as we near the 2020 elections.  The Democratic Party appears to be losing its grip on the Black vote and they must double down on the racist theme.

The Deep State Smear Machine has been very successful.  It has convinced millions of Americans that Trump is a racist.  

Trump's reference to the China virus and China pandemic has opened him to charges of being anti-Asian.  His alleged comment about "shithole" nations has demonstrated his anti-Black beliefs.  This one accusation alone reveals the effectiveness of the Deep State Smear Machine.  It is almost universally accepted that President Trump made this comment.  Even pro-Trump commentators have repeated it.  Is it even true?

Twelve people attended the Jan. 11, 2017 Oval Office meeting on immigration where Senator Dick Durbin claimed the president used the term to describe Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras and several African countries.  Durbin, clutching his pearls and on the verge of having the vapors, remarked  “I cannot imagine that in the history of [the Oval Office], that hallowed room, where the president of the United States goes to work every day, there has ever been a conversation quite like that. It was vile, it was hateful, it was racist.”  

Apparently Sen. Durbin attended that same history lecture as Joe Biden.  Many things have taken place in that "hallowed room" that could be considered vile.  The senator might recall Monica Lewinsky's activities or perhaps Lyndon Johnson's.  According to Snopes LBJ “rarely shied away from using the N-word in private.”  Snopes excused this language because it was “calculated to achieve a specific end.”  Johnson's commitment to civil rights revealed his “genuine idealism”.  It is unlikely Trump will receive that same benign treatment.

How reliable are Sen. Durbin's leaked comments about Oval Office meeting.  Durbin has a history of fabricating comments.  In a private White House meeting in 2013 Durbin wrote on his Facebook page, “In a ‘negotiation’ meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told [President Barack Obama]: ‘I cannot even stand to look at you.’”  The White House and the House speaker’s office denied Durbin’s account of events.  Obama's press secretary Jay Carney stated, “I looked into this and spoke with somebody who was in that meeting and it did not happen.”

Meghan McCain asked the Senator about the when he appeared on The View: “You have a history of misrepresenting statements from private White House meetings, and some say that you’ve actually done more harm than good to the DACA deal by revealing what Trump said in his private meeting. Do you think that’s true?”  Durbin's response was to comment about a demonstration outside the studio.

Of the twelve people attending the meeting four have denied Durbin's claim.  Lindsay Graham was the only attendee to give Durbin qualified support, saying his account was "basically accurate."  Sen. David Perdue, and Sen. Tom Cotton have been called liars for denying Durbin's claim; an accusation Durbin has escaped.  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen denied under oath that she heard the president use the term.  For this she was hounded by Senator "Spartacus" Booker.  Pounding his fists on the dais Booker howled, "When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about his experience in that meeting. And for you not to feel that hurt and that pain, and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues, saying 'I've already answered that line of questions,' when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because of what they're worried about what happened in the White House, that's unacceptable to me."

This supposed leak was created in order to discredit the president.  Accounts of the meeting routinely omit mention of El Salvador because that does not fit the anti-Black meme.  The fact that it might damage our relations with African countries to the detriment of the nation is irrelevant.  The goal is to smear the president with the racist label at all costs.   

John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing).  He has a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations from St. Mary’s University.  He is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.  He is featured on the BBC's program  "Things We Forgot to Remember:" Morgenthau Plan and Post-War Germany.

Image credit: Alisdare Hickson, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0. Color and FotoSketcher processing enhancements added by Monica Showalter for illustrative purposes.