Joe Biden: George Floyd's death has had a bigger global impact than MLK's assassination

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden recently claimed that the killing of George Floyd has had a greater global impact than even the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Even Dr. King's assassination did not have the worldwide impact the George Floyd's death did," Biden said during an economic roundtable Thursday afternoon in Philadelphia.

Biden credited the prevalence of cellphones in today's society for allowing for the documentation of police brutality and causing the widespread impact.

"What happened to George Floyd — now you got how many people around the country, millions of cellphones. It's changed the way everybody's looking at this," Biden argued. "Look at the millions of people marching around the world."

Joe Biden says George Floyd's death had 'worldwide impact'youtu.be

"It's just like television changed the Civil Rights movement for the better when they saw Bull Connor and his dogs ripping the clothes off of elderly black women going to church and firehoses ripping the skin off of young kids," the former vice president added.

Protests and riots have erupted across the country and around the world since the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by white ex-Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25. Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest despite Floyd's cries that he couldn't breathe.

The incident was caught on video and immediately began spreading like wildfire on the internet.

It remains to be seen what substantive reforms, if any, follow the mass outrage at Floyd's killing, however. His death has subsequently ignited calls for everything from police reform to the dismantling of police departments to full-fledged anarchist and socialistic causes.