WASHINGTON — President Biden stumbled over his script Friday, saying at a civil rights event in the Oval Office that he served as vice president for 12 years — before catching his error and going on to claim that deadly race riots “could happen again” in America.
Biden, 81, made the remarks while signing an order to designate as a national monument an area of Springfield, Ill., where a white lynch mob in August 1908 clashed with black residents near Abraham Lincoln’s former home.
“I never thought that, having been in the Senate for so many years as well as vice president for 12 years — for 8 years and president for 4 years that I’d see, that I’d have to worry about people wanting to erase history,” Biden said, making reference to Republican-led states banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory, which emphasizes race as the primary prism for historical analysis