Andrew Yang made a running leap off the stage at James Clyburn’s Fish Fry on Friday night as the crowd cheered him on.
Yang, an entrepreneur turned presidential candidate, told the crowd at the annual South Carolina event: ‘If you’ve heard anything about me you’ve heard this: there’s an Asian man running for president who wants to give everyone $1,000.’
‘I’m not a career politician,’ Yang told the crowd, who gave him one of the most enthusiastic receptions of the night.
Andrew Yang made a running leap off the stage at James Clyburn’s Fish Fry on Friday night as the crowd cheered him on
Yang has gained national attention with his plan to offer every American $1,000 a month in what he calls universal income.
He’s qualified for the first Democratic debate next week through achieving enough donors and hitting benchmarks in the polls.
And, on Friday, he joined 20 other Democratic contenders at an event held by the most powerful African American politician in the state.
James Clyburn, the long time South Carolina congressman and highest-ranking African American in the House of Representatives, noted Yang’s appeal when he introduced the 44-year-old presidential contender.
He welcomed the ‘leader of the Yang Gang’ to the stage as the crowd yelled ‘Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.’
Yang ended his speech to the crow with what’s becoming his signature line: ‘The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.’
As the crowd cheered he took a running leap off the stage to the ground below.
He told DailyMail.com afterward that he wanted the crowd to know he appreciated them.
‘It seemed like I had some enthusiastic fans. And I always feel very grateful to folks who stand there, oftentimes for hours on so if I can do something simple that makes them know that, you know, I appreciate them. Give them some thing that they can remember,’ he said. ‘And it’s in my power to provide that I’m very happy to do so. I feel bad if I didn’t, and I had the opportunity.’
Andrew Yang prepares to make his leap
Also during the event, former Vice President Joe Biden faced South Carolina voters for the first time since he spoke about working with virulent segregationist lawmakers while serving in the Senate for decades – and called for the party to back whoever wins the nomination.
Biden took the stage immediately before Cory Booker at a South Carolina fish fry Friday night – and each called for party unity after engaging in the sharpest intra-party spat of the campaign.
‘Folks I’m here to tell you I hope to be your nominee,’ Biden told the crowd. ‘Whomever the Democratic nominee is, we have to stay together and elect a Democrat president of the United States of America.’
Biden also made sure to tout his link to former President Barack Obama.
He called Clyburn ‘The highest ranking African American in the history of the United States of America – other than the guy I worked with for eight years.
Joe Biden is calling for unity at the end of the Democratic primary process
Booker, who trashed Biden after his comments to a Manhattan fundraiser about working with Sen. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Sen. Herman Talmadge of Georgia, also called for unity.
‘We all must make sure that we may be in the midst of a primary but when the primary is over we become a united force,’ urged Booker, a New Jersey Senator who was among the first to go after Biden for his comments.
Booker wouldn’t respond directly when asked whether he and Biden had agreed on delivering the same unity message following their angry spat.
Cory Booker urged the crowd to be a united force in the next presidential election
Teneshia Robins of Columbia takes a drink of water while supporting Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker at the entrance of “Jim Clyburn’s World Famous Fish Fry” in Columbia, South Carolina, U.S., June 21, 2019. REUTERS/Randall Hill
South Carolina Democrats are served dinner at Rep. Jim Clyburn’s World Famous Fish Fry
Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders try to chant louder than supporters of candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren outside of Jim Clyburn’s World Famous Fish Fry in Columbia, South Carolina, U.S., June 21, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Supporters of presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker cheer outside of Jim Clyburn’s World Famous Fish Fry in Columbia, South Carolina, U.S., June 21, 2019. Booker tore into Biden this week
He said the mission was to ‘not just to beat one guy in one office but we become a united force to put the indivisible back in this one nation.’
‘I think everybody in this group believes that we should be pulling our party together, whoever the nominee, we’ve got to support them,’ he told DailyMail.com.
But Booker elected not to use the event to go on the attack against Biden. Instead, he settled for a pair of fish jokes at the end of his on-stage remarks.
He told Clyburn: ‘From one dad to a guy who likes dad jokes. Let’s not flounder. Let’s go out there and kick some bass.’
CNN asked Biden why Booker should apologize – as Biden called for him to do after Booker unloaded on his own comments.
‘No one should apologize,’ he responded.
The two men reportedly had a tense phone call after Booker bashed Biden’s comments and Biden said Booker is the one who should apologize. Booker wouldn’t say if the men spoke back stage Friday night.
Clyburn, asked by DailyMail.com whether he played peacemaker Friday night, said he had not. He came out forcefully in defense of Biden after his remarks, and is a prominent African American leader as the Majority Whip in the House.
He denied that the tension hung over the event. ‘Not to me. I don’t feel it,’ he said.
‘I thought that was great. I thought it was genuine,’ he said of the call for unity.
Asked if Biden owed Booker an apology, Clyburn responded: ‘I have no idea. I’m not into that. I’ve talked about all I need to say about that. Anybody whose spend his whole life having to work – having to work with Strom Thurmond – I don’t know how you would ask me that,’ he said, referring to the longtime South Carolina senator who ran for president as a Dixiecrat.
Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts told DailyMail.com Biden and other candidates all spent time talking together backstage.
Like all candidates, Biden had to keep his comments to just a few minutes.
‘That’s the shortest speech Joe Biden has ever made,’ said Clyburn when it was over.
With his comments about segregationists still swirling, Biden attended a major annual political event organized by Rep. James C. Clyburn, a member of the Democratic leadership and a longtime member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
With internal bickering within his front-running presidential campaign about his handling of the crisis, Biden shared the same stage as his rivals – including some who went after him for his comments.
Before he stood before Clyburn’s crowd, Biden spent two and a half hours meeting behind closed doors with African American leaders in the state.
The leaders said his comments on segregation weren’t discussed.
‘The Vice President mostly focused on policy,’ said state Sen. Marlon Kimpson of Charleston.
That said, Kimpson noted he didn’t think Biden would talk of segregations going forward.
‘Going forward I don’t think you’ll hear him use those words. And this may be a learning experience,’ Kimpson said.
But Biden – who has plenty of past campaign experience in the state thanks to his previous presidential bids and time as Barack Obama’s running mate – was speaking to mostly friendly crowd of past supporters in that meeting.
‘It seems they’re nit-picking with all the small things,’ said Doretha White said of former Vice President Joe Biden
Erin Porter, a student from Orangeburg, was holding a Cory Booker fan to keep cool, but isn’t sure she is supporting him
‘I think everybody was pretty well committed to Biden. But you never know who’s spying and who’s not in campaigns. In campaigns, you just don’t know,’ said former state Representative Fletcher Smith.
Voters testing the waters to see who they might support for president were mostly keyed in to Biden’s comments.
‘It seems they’re nit-picking with all the small things,’ said Doretha White, 66, a retired turnpike worker and bank teller. She said she likes Biden because he served as President Obama’s ‘right hand,’ said white, who says she records DailyMail TV on her DVR.
Erin Porter, a student from Orangeburg, was holding a Cory Booker fan to keep cool, though she says she hadn’t settled on supporting him. She mentioned Biden’s having touched women who later said it made them feel uncomfortable.
‘I do not feel good about that,’ she said. ‘There’s a personal boundary.’
The call for unity by Booker and Biden came after reverberations for Biden’s comments about Sen. Eastland.
Eastland, who Biden bragged about working with, called African Americans ‘flesh eaters’ and said white people have the right to pursue ‘dead n*****s,’ it emerged Friday.
Eastland made the references when he spoke at a 1956 pro-segregation rally during the Montgomery bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
‘In every stage of the bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinky n*****s … African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used.
Caro’s description of Eastland’s words at the White Citizens Council in the Montgomery Coliseum – ‘the largest pro-segregation rally in history’ – underline the danger being associated with Eastland represent to Biden.
James Eastland in his Washington D.C. office with photos of Confederate leaders on the wall: from top left: Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president; Thomas Jefferson, who and John C. Calhoun. Bottom row from left: Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson
Biden also invoked the name of Senator Herman E. Talmadge in his controversial remarks