“Our culture is not imported from some African nation, or some Asian nation. It’s our English jurisprudential culture. Our European culture”, the Democratic presidential candidate appears to have said, detailing an unequivocal view on the issue of American identity in the short clip.
The controversial footage - which currently has over a million views - has been debunked by the Biden campaign as misleadingly doctored, as excerpts from his original speech were taken out of context as a means of specifically tarnishing Biden and his political image.
It was revealed that the edited 20 seconds of Biden's remarks were taken from ABC News coverage of Biden speaking for over an hour in Derry, New Hampshire, on 30 December 2019. The full video shows that Biden was commenting on changing the US culture around violence against women.
“Folks, this is about changing the culture, our culture, our culture, it’s not imported from some African nation or some Asian nation. It is our English jurisprudential culture, our European culture that says it is all right”, Biden stressed, while debating the difficulty victims face in reporting sexual assault on college campuses.
Nevertheless, some netizens claimed that Biden really does sound like a bigot.
Biden is not the first ranking Democrat who has been targeted in controversial or intentionally misleading video. Last year, a heavily-edited clip of what was made to appear as a 'drunk' version of US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at a public event went viral on social media. It was later revealed that pranksters had slowed the pace of the video to gain a false 'drunk' effect.