An Associated Press (AP) headline gives the impression that Democrat presidential Candidate Joe Biden never eulogized a former member of the infamous Ku Klux Klan (KKK). But, as actor James Woods noted on Friday, the article says Biden did, indeed, once eulogize former Klansman Robert Byrd.
As Woods notes in his Tweet, “any reasonable person” reading the headline of the AP “fact-check” – “Biden did not eulogize former KKK ‘grand wizard’” – would conclude that Biden was innocent of the criticism that he had once publicly praised former Klansman and Democrat Senator Robert Byrd:
“Here is an @AP headline that any reasonable person would think exonerates Joe Biden’s racist past. In fact the gist of the story is that KKK member Robert Byrd, who was ABSOLUTELY eulogized by Joe Biden, was an ‘Exalted Cyclops,’ not a ‘Grand Wizard.’”
Indeed, the AP fact-check refutes Byrd’s rank in the KKK – not his membership in the organization, itself:
“Byrd never held the post of ‘grand wizard’ in the Ku Klux Klan — a top leadership role — though he was a member of the organization in the early 1940s.
“As a young man in West Virginia, Byrd recruited members to a local KKK chapter and was elected to the post of ‘exalted cyclops’ according to his 2005 autobiography.”
