Biden blames Steyer for drop in South Carolina African American support

Former Vice President Joe Biden attributed his drop in African American support ahead of the South Carolina primary to billionaire Tom Steyer’s spending in the state in a Sunday interview on “Face the Nation.”

“What’s happening is you have Steyer spending millions of dollars out campaigning there, so I think a lot’s happening in terms of the amount of money being spent by billionaires to try to cut into the African American vote,” Biden told CBS’ Margaret Brennan.

When Brennan described South Carolina, the first primary state where African Americans are a major bloc of the electorate, as Biden’s “firewall,” the former vice president responded, “You said it’s my firewall, I’ve never said that. I’ve said I’m going to do well there.”

“You guys can do all the pontificating about what it means,” Biden said. “That’s not my job, my job is to go in and make the best I can, I think we’re going to do well, I think we’re going to go on to super Tuesday and do very well.”

Biden also doubled down on calling on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to disavow abusive supporters or those claiming to be supporters, which the Vermont senator has done on multiple occasions, saying “that’s Trump-like stuff.”

The former vice president went on to implicitly contrast himself with both President Trump and Sanders in the wake of reports that Russia had acted to intervene on the two candidates’ behalf.

“The Russians don’t want me to be the nominee … no one’s helping me to try to clinch the nomination.”

Biden also claimed Facebook had alerted him to bot traffic attempting to spread misinformation about him.