Trump Tears into Biden over Newest Plagiarism Accusations
President Donald Trump criticized Democratic presidential nomination front-runner Joe Biden on Wednesday over revelations that parts of the former vice president’s climate change platform were lifted from outside sources that were not initially credited.
“Plagiarism charge against Sleepy Joe Biden on his ridiculous Climate Change Plan is a big problem, but the Corrupt Media will save him. His other problem is that he is drawing flies, not people, to his Rallies. Nobody is showing up, I mean nobody. You can’t win without people!” Trump tweeted while in Europe.
Plagiarism charge against Sleepy Joe Biden on his ridiculous Climate Change Plan is a big problem, but the Corrupt Media will save him. His other problem is that he is drawing flies, not people, to his Rallies. Nobody is showing up, I mean nobody. You can’t win without people!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2019
Biden’s campaign had to scramble after progressive activist Josh Nelson on Tuesday revealed that parts of Biden’s “Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice” were taken directly from two environmental groups.
Although the plan was later updated to give those groups credit, they were not credited when the plan was unveiled, NBC News reported.
On the left, Joe Biden’s climate plan. Source: https://t.co/WHWvRK784s
On the right, a description of the Carbon Capture Coalition on the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions website. Source: https://t.co/nulmTqXZ1p pic.twitter.com/4f010MqNjY
— Josh Nelson (@josh_nelson) June 4, 2019
This is not the first time Biden has faced charges of plagiarism.
When Biden sought the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, he used parts of a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock during a 1987 Iowa appearance, The New York Times reported at the time. Biden did not reference Kinnock as the source of his speech.
Another 1987 article in The New York Times reported that Biden admitted he had plagiarized a law review article during his first year of law school. Biden abandoned his foundering campaign not long after those reports surfaced.
The new dustup led the Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to remark, “Joe Biden has been plagiarizing for longer than I’ve been alive,” Fox News reported.
“Joe Biden has made an entire career out of plagiarizing,” she tweeted. “He was caught doing it in law school, it derailed his first failed presidential campaign, and now he’s doing it again.”
Joe Biden has made an entire career out of plagiarizing.
He was caught doing it in law school, it derailed his first failed presidential campaign, and now he’s doing it again. https://t.co/Uz2eUaILdX
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) June 4, 2019
The Biden campaign passed the incident off as an accident.
“Several citations, some from sources cited in other parts of the plan, were inadvertently left out of the final version of the 22-page document. As soon as we were made aware of it, we updated to include the proper citations,” the campaign said in a statement.
For some, that was good enough.
“We’re supposed to be mad at Biden because he copied a few lines of his climate plan from environmental groups?” Michael Grunwald, a writer for Politico, tweeted. “That’s not ‘plagiarism.’ That’s ‘agreeing.’”
We’re supposed to be mad at Biden because he copied a few lines of his climate plan from environmental groups? That’s not “plagiarism.” That’s “agreeing.” “https://t.co/E2lR2oOuFB
— Michael Grunwald (@MikeGrunwald) June 4, 2019
Nelson, vice president of CREDO mobile, had started the ball rolling by posting two examples of the campaign using the language of others.
“Carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS) is a rapidly growing technology that has the potential to create economic benefits for multiple industries while significantly reducing carbon dioxide emissions,” Biden’s plan read.
Nelson noted that the BlueGreen Alliance used the exact wording in a 2017 letter.
The website The Daily Caller gave Biden’s plan an even closer look and found three instances in which the plan parroted language used by others, including the website Vox, a federal government website and the website American Rivers. Biden’s plan was later updated to give credit to those groups.
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