On Saturday's PBS NewsHour Weekend, correspondent Yamiche Alcindor delivered commentary that sounded like partisan Democratic spin as she proclaimed that Joe Biden had defeated President Donald Trump with a "record number of voters," and then declared that it was "political poetry" that Senator Kamala Harris was part of the ticket beat Trump after his history of birtherism.
Even though Biden's vote total is a "record number" largely because the population of the U.S. is at an all-time high, Alcindor touted the "repudiation" of Trump as if it were unprecedented:
This was a President who ran as a political outsider who has now been ousted by a record number of voters. Yes, the election was tight, but Joe Biden has more votes than any other person who has run for President, and this really is a repudiation of President Trump and all of the things that he has been doing -- the racist language, the downplaying of the coronavirus, the scandals. He will leave office -- if this all goes through -- he will leave office as an impeached President, and he will join only nine other Presidents in history to not win a second term.
After host Hari Sreenivasan asked for commentary on the "historic nature" of Senator Harris being elected Vice President, Alcindor gushed:
This is a little bit of political poetry here. President Trump began his political career questioning the birthplace of the first African American President in that racist theory of birtherism, and he's now going to be leaving office with a black woman coming into office as Vice President -- someone that he's mocked for saying her name wrong over and over again.
After noting some of Senator Harris's other distinctions, the PBS correspondent then talked up Harris's election as a victory for the BLM agenda:
I've just been talking to Black Lives Matter activists as well as Ben Crump -- an icon, in some ways, and civil rights attorney who has done so many different cases from Trayvon Martin to Ahmaud Arbery to George Floyd -- and he told me that he felt hope today. He feels as though this election of Kamala Harris puts African American women -- who have been the backbone of the Democratic party -- into an executive office for the first time in history. And there has really been this feeling of excitement -- this feeling that things might be different this time around as we look at all of the different ways that African Americans face injustices and inequalities in this country.
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Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Saturday, November 7, PBS NewsHour Weekend:
6:22 p.m. Eastern
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Let's just step back even further and say this was a President who ran as a political outsider who has now been ousted by a record number of voters. Yes, the election was tight, but Joe Biden has more votes than any other person who has run for President, and this really is a repudiation of President Trump and all of the things that he has been doing -- the racist language, the downplaying of the coronavirus, the scandals. He will leave office -- if this all goes through -- he will leave office as an impeached President, and he will join only nine other Presidents in history to not win a second term.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Let's also talk about the historic nature of Kamala Harris being the presumptive Vice President.
ALCINDOR: This is a little bit of political poetry here. President Trump began his political career questioning the birthplace of the first African American President in that racist theory of birtherism, and he's now going to be leaving office with a black woman coming into office as Vice President -- someone that he's mocked for saying her name wrong over and over again. This is, of course, also a historic first. Senator Harris -- now Vice President-elect Harris -- has had so many different firsts in her lifetime, but now she is the first woman to be elected Vice President-elect. She's the first black woman, the first Asian woman, the first graduate of a historically black college and university, the first member of the Divine Nine -- those are the African American sororities. She's a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated. There are so many different firsts here, and it's history-making for her to walk into office just a heartbeat away from the presidency.
I've just been talking to Black Lives Matter activists as well as Ben Crump -- an icon, in some ways, and civil rights attorney who has done so many different cases from Trayvon Martin to Ahmaud Arbery to George Floyd -- and he told me that he felt hope today. He feels as though this election of Kamala Harris puts African American women -- who have been the backbone of the Democratic party -- into an executive office for the first time in history. And there has really been this feeling of excitement -- this feeling that things might be different this time around as we look at all of the different ways that African Americans face injustices and inequalities in this country.
