"Joe's an honest guy." ---Lord KinnockArchived Message
Posted by Morrissey on January 20, 2021, 9:25 pm
Anyone under 30 might have been puzzled when Kellyanne Conway, the outgoing White House counselor, recently accused Joe Biden of serial plagiarism and presented Neil Kinnock, the former leader of Britain’s Labour party, as exhibit A.
The reference harked back to 1987 and a blunder that ended Biden’s first bid for the American presidency. In his closing remarks at a Democratic primary debate, he lifted passages from one of Kinnock’s most moving speeches without attribution. The resulting plagiarism “scandal” sank Biden’s campaign.
A generation later, Biden is preparing for three presidential debates against Donald Trump and has the full support of Lord Kinnock, now a Labour peer who always regarded the incident as an innocent mistake.
“Joe’s an honest guy,” the 78-year-old said by phone from his home in north London. “If Trump had done it, I would know that he was lying.”