Critics ripped President Biden this past weekend after he butchered the name of rapper LL Cool J during the Congressional Black Caucus’ Phoenix Awards Saturday night — and referred to him as “boy” before hastily correcting himself.
“‘Boy’ is a white racist word. Joe Biden knows this,” radio host Charlamagne tha God said on Monday. “That’s why he corrected himself, but I’m gonna tell you what I found egregious. The fact that Joe Biden got LL Cool J’s name wrong to begin with.”
The left-wing host of “The Breakfast Club” went on to play a clip from the TV sitcom “Good Times,” where the actor Michael Evans had said “‘Boy’ is a white racist word.”
“He fully understands the word ‘boy’ in a racial context around a white man referring to a black man as ‘boy,’” Charlamagne added, before pivoting to attack the 80-year-old president over his age.
“A lot of people are upset that Joe Biden referred to LL Cool J as a ‘boy.’ As you can hear he corrected himself on his spot,” he said. “You know why Joe Biden corrected himself — because he’s 137 years old.”
The host then dubbed Biden his “Donkey of the Day” for the verbal flub.
The president was honoring the music careers of LL Cool J, whose birth name is Jason Todd Smith, and rapper and DJ MC Lyte, calling them “two of the great artists of our time, representing the groundbreaking legacy of hip-hop in America.”
“LL J — Cool J,” Biden said on Saturday during his speech, prompting laughter from the audience at the mispronunciation. “By the way, that boy has got — he’s got — I think that man has got biceps bigger than my thighs.”
Biden made a similar racially insensitive gaffe during an appearance on Charlamagne’s show during his presidential campaign in May 2020, when he said African American voters “ain’t black” if they cast ballots for Donald Trump.
Conservatives also piled on Biden for his remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus event.
“You do not say ‘boy’ when referring to a well-grown man — especially a black man. Because it hearkens back to days of slavery and there’s a lot of connotation,” former Fox News host Trish Regan said.
“If you’re a normal person and you have a little bit of a sensitivity chip, which clearly this president does not have, you do not say things like this,” she told listeners of her podcast, “The Trish Regan Show.”
The White House and the Congressional Black Caucus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Social media users also posted about the gaffe, with one calling the oldest-ever president an “ignorant racist Democrat.”
“If any Republican said this, there would be an eruption of outrage from the media that would be ongoing. And everyone knows it,” former Trump communications director Tim Murtaugh also posted Sunday on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “But they’ll just let Biden slide on this, like they’ve done for all the other racist things he’s said over the decades.”
In February, Biden also referred to Maryland’s black Democratic governor as a “boy” when delivering a speech on the economy.
“You got a hell of a new governor in Wes Moore, I tell ya,” he said during remarks before an audience of IBEW union workers in Lanham.
“He’s the real deal, and the boy looked like he could still play. He got some guns on him,” Biden added, drawing cheers from the crowd.
The cascade of insensitive comments comes as Biden is facing low approval numbers — and growing calls for him to step down before the 2024 election.
A majority of Americans disapprove of the president, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, with 54.5% saying they do not approve of the job he is doing and 40.8% saying they approve of it.
Recent polls have also shown Biden trailing his chief political opponent, former President Donald Trump, in election matchups, with roughly three-quarters of respondents citing concerns about the president’s age.