President Joe Biden told MSNBC on Saturday that he regrets using the word “illegal” during his State of the Union address on Thursday night.
Speaking to Jonathan Capehart, host of MSNBC’s “The Saturday Show”, Biden expressed regret using the word to describe an undocumented immigrant who is charged with killing a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia.
“An undocumented person. And I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal.’ It’s ‘undocumented,’” Biden said.
“So you regret using that word?” Capehart pressed him.
“Yes,” Biden replied.
The comments come just a day after Biden did not seem to answer if he regretted using the word while he was at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
“Well, I probably — I don’t re — technically not supposed to be here,” he responded.
Biden used the term “an illegal” to describe Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan who was charged with killing 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley.
“He talks about ‘vermin.’ The way he talks about these people ‘polluting the blood.’ I talked about what I’m not going to do. What I won’t do, I’m not going to treat any of these people with disrespect,” Biden said.
Before a rally in Georgia on Saturday night, Trump met with Riley’s parents backstage.
“They have a new name that’s even worse,” Trump said as he mocked Biden’s use of the word. “They have a new name. You know what the new name is? Neighbor. They want to call them neighbor.”
