BIDEN: TRUMP FANS ‘FLAMES OF HATE’
Presidential hopeful addresses racial wounds of nation
Joe Biden on Tuesday excoriated President Donald Trump’s stewardship of a nation convulsed in crisis over issues of race and police brutality, likening Trump’s language to that of Southern racists of the 1960s while also warning Americans that “we cannot let our rage consume us.”
In his first formal speech out in public since the coronavirus shuttered the campaign trail in mid-march, Biden delivered perhaps his closest approximation yet of a presidential address to the nation. He emphasized themes of empathy and unity to draw a clear contrast with Trump, who over the last 24 hours threatened to deploy the military nationwide to “dominate” protesters and told governors they had to deliver “retribution” to demonstrators or else they would look like “a bunch of jerks.”
With Trump determined to cast himself as a self-described “law and order” president, Biden aimed to appeal to a broader range of the electorate’s concerns, pledging to address economic inequality and racial injustice but also urging the nation to come together at a moment of deep civil unrest.
“Donald Trump has turned this country into a battlefield riven by old resentments and fresh fears,” Biden said, speaking against a backdrop of American flags at Philadelphia’s City Hall. “Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be? Is this what we want to pass on to our children and our grandchildren? Fear, anger, finger pointing, rather than the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety, self-absorption, selfishness?”
The country, Biden said, was “crying out for leadership.”
Biden’s remarks, which were by turns optimistic about America’s potential and somber about the depth of its challenges, came as his team moved urgently to press a more aggressive case against Trump at an extraordinarily high-stakes moment for the country, marked by a pandemic, devastating unemployment numbers, racial strife and violent clashes between police and protesters during the demonstrations, which in many cities have led to looting.
Heightening the tensions, in the last several days alone, Trump has called protesters
“terrorists,” spent time in an underground bunker and visited a church for photographs with a Bible, while peaceful protesters were dispersed with tear gas to clear his path. His campaign is increasingly seeking to paint Biden as sympathetic to those “causing mayhem,” as Trump’s team put it Tuesday.
To chart his own vision for the country, Biden left his home in Wilmington, Del., to travel to Philadelphia. It is the city where the nation’s founding documents were crafted, where President Barack Obama gave his famous speech on race in 2008, and where Biden held his first large-scale rally of the 2020 campaign, promising to heal the soul of the country and calling for national unity. It is now also a city rocked by riots and growing racial tensions.
In his remarks, which lasted around 20 minutes, Biden both rebuked his opponent, urging him to consult the Constitution and the Bible instead of eviscerating the “guardrails” of democracy, and also said that defeating Trump would not be enough to heal the nation’s centuries-old divisions and hatreds as he called for immediate policing reforms.
“We’re a nation in pain,” Biden said. “We must not let our pain destroy us. We’re a nation enraged, but we cannot let our rage consume us. We’re a nation that’s exhausted, but we will not allow our exhaustion to defeat us. As president, it’s my commitment to all of you to lead on these issues and to listen, because I truly believe in my heart of hearts, we can overcome.”
Declaring this the moment “for our nation to deal with systemic racism,” Biden called on Congress to pass measures including a ban on chokeholds and set a “model use-of-force standard.” And he highlighted his promise to create a national police oversight commission.
The presidency, Biden said, is “a very big job,” no one would get everything right, including himself. “But I promise you this,” he added.
“I won’t fan the f lames of hate. I’ll seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our country — not use them for political gain.”
The former vice president, 77, is cautiously re-emerging onto the public landscape at one of the most volatile moments in at least a generation.
The killing of George Floyd, a black man who died last week after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, has sparked an outpouring of grief and anger across the country. Peaceful demonstrations during the day have turned chaotic at night as images of American cities, under curfew and on fire, blanket the airwaves.
The country, Biden said Tuesday, requires “leadership that can recognize pain and deep grief of communities that have had a knee on their neck for a long time.”
Biden also decried violence and clashes between police, protesters and looters.
“There’s no place for violence, no place for looting, or destroying property, or burning churches or destroying businesses,” he said, noting that many people of color have been victims of the chaos. “Nor is it acceptable for our police, sworn to protect and serve all people, to escalate tension, resort to excessive violence. We need to distinguish between legitimate peaceful protests and opportunistic violent destruction.”
Meanwhile, the coronavirus rages on, with more than 100,000 Americans dead, and more than 40 million people who have filed for unemployment.
“The pain is raw,” Biden said. “The pain is real. The president of the United States must be part of the solution, not the problem. But this president today is part of the problem and accelerates it.”
Glueck writes for The New York Times.