Thread by @KFILE

Small thread on Biden and "predators" and "super predators."

This story I did last year on the 1993 video of Joe Biden warning of "predators" who needed to be taken out of society because they were beyond rehabilitation got 150K last night.

https://twitter.com/KellyannePolls/status/1319499511107039232

Some have scoffed at fact checks of Trump falsely saying Biden used the term "super predators" because he just similar language criticized as dehumanizing in 1993.

But "super predator" was a specific crime theory from 1995 and it wasn't public in 1993.

https://twitter.com/FDRLST/status/1319483019527421952

I found the 1993 speech when searching to see if Biden embraced the "super predator" crime theory or used the term. I checked all Judiciary Committee records/subcommittee records from the 1990s and Biden's floor speeches.

I did find one instance of Biden using the term...

...but the instance was Biden arguing *against* putting youth in adult prisons in a 1997 hearing where he said that most youth *weren't* "the so called 'super predators'."

cnn.com/politics/live-…

The other issue for Trump, at least, is he embraced the tough of crime stance of the 1990s and himself cited statistics from the academic scholars who pushed the super predator crime theory to argue there'd be roaming "wolf packs" in big cities.

cnn.com/2019/05/31/pol…

Trump could have factually criticized Biden for using his use of "predators" in 1993 (his campaign is in fact using the speech in radio ads on urban radio stations) – language heavily criticized as dehumanizing – but instead inaccurately said he used the term "super predators."

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

One last bit of context, is I do make list when checking through Congressional records to see who used the term "super predator."

All of the instances were Republicans.