You can read Sen. Cory Booker’s full statement on the president’s ‘invitation to erase race’ here.
By CNN Political Unit
Joe Biden was never invited to work in China because he’s not Chinese, says Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley in a scathing letter to the Democratic presidential candidate.
Hawley, a Republican, slammed Biden for a comment the vice president made during a Connecticut town hall. Biden said, “There’s no one out there that can say that I know.”
“I am disappointed, Mr. Vice President, that your harkening back to a past that clearly dates back to the Communist era is hardly a new thing,” Hawley writes in the letter obtained by CNN. “But I am particularly disappointed that you use that blatant lie about me and, especially, about your record, to deflect from your failed record as a policymaker and your lack of experience.”
Hawley had previously brushed off Biden’s claim that he was “hanging out” with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“It’s funny the things you can say to tear down a little guy,” Hawley told CNN earlier this month. “I’m not hanging out with the Chinese leader. I’m going to another dinner. We’ve all been to those dinner parties, Mr. Vice President.”
Earlier in August, Hawley, asked about Biden’s comment at a town hall in St. Louis, responded, “I am the American who has gone to Beijing, been to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.”
Hawley says his visit, which he called a “listening tour,” is necessary because of “Mr. Biden’s inability to govern.”
Hawley says his letter to Biden does not “include a request that you’re ever invited to work in China, but my hope is that we can continue to talk about this topic on the campaign trail, because it’s a serious issue.”
Hawley cited an ABC report citing unnamed Chinese officials that accused Biden of “drama” for saying he would have run for president as a Chinese-American.
“The leaders of the Chinese government make sure that Americans’ expectations of them and their own needs are never in alignment,” Hawley writes. “But the fact is that you say it over and over to audiences that question your fitness to be the President of the United States, and you believe that that matters.”
“Let me be clear: That Mr. Vice President, you are more than just a 1% Taiwanese voter on your way home from China,” he adds.
Hawley is trying to make inroads with the Chinese community.
He said recently at a Chinese-American Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Missouri that he is becoming “an enfant terrible.”