Biden: Trump to blame for violence
‘For years he’s fomented it,’ Democrat says of president, while refocusing race on virus
PITTSBURGH >> Accusing President Donald Trump of “poisoning” the nation’s values, Joe Biden on Monday condemned violence at recent protests and blamed Trump as the battle over who’s at fault and who can keep Americans safe emerged as the sharpest dividing line for the campaign’s final weeks.
In his most direct attacks yet, Biden accused Trump of causing the divisions that have ignited the violence, delivering an uncharacteristically blistering speech and distancing himself from radical forces involved in altercations.
He said of Trump, “He doesn’t want to shed light, he wants to generate heat, and he’s stoking violence in our cities. He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it.”
Biden also tried to refocus the race on what has been its defining theme — Trump’s handling of the pandemic that has left
more than 180,000 Americans dead — after a multiday onslaught by Trump’s team to make the campaign about the violence rattling U.S. cities.
Biden has largely remained near his home in Delaware to stem the spread of the coronavirus, but he stepped out in a new phase of his campaign Monday, in a speech in Pittsburgh and a brief stop at a local firehouse.
Trump and his campaign team believe that the more the national discourse is about anything other than
the virus, the better it is for the president. They have seized on the recent unrest in Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, leaning hard into a defense of law and order while suggesting that Biden is powerless to stop extremists.
Biden rejected the charge, firmly decrying the clashes.
Set aside Monday were Biden’s lofty appeals about the “soul of the nation,” a staple of his usual stump speech, replaced by an urgent call for action and his fierce accusation that Trump was a “toxic presence in this nation for four years” who was “poisoning the values this nation has always held dear, poisoning
our very democracy.”
Trump and his team continued to hammer away on what they believe is a powerful electoral argument, contending that Biden is in thrall to leftist forces and emphasizing chaotic protest images they believe could send worried suburban and senior voters back to Trump’s column.
“Just watched what Biden had to say,” Trump tweeted soon after the former vice president concluded his remarks in Pittsburgh. “To me, he’s blaming the Police far more than he’s blaming the Rioters, Anarchists, Agitators, and Looters, which he could never blame or he would lose the Radical Left Bernie supports!”
Biden has been pushed by worried Democrats, including some voices inside his own campaign, to deal with the violence head on and at greater length, though he had previously condemned it. With Trump pounding the issue in his convention speech, which was then followed by more bloodshed over the weekend, many in Biden’s party, still shell-shocked by 2016, urged the former vice president to get ahead of the rare issue that has broken through the national focus on the pandemic.
But Biden didn’t just play defense, he went on the attack, lambasting Trump not just as inciting violence but for his ties to Russia and
his handling of the nation’s economy.
Following up his Democratic convention address, in which he didn’t mention Trump’s name, Biden on Monday invoked Trump’s name 32 times, directly assailing him in remarks that seemed intended to silence worries in his party and the Beltway’s chattering class. He pulled no punches about the violence.
“It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted,” Biden said.
He also accused Trump of being too “weak” to call on his own supporters to stop acting as “armed militia.” And he leaned on his own 47-year career in
politics to defend himself against Republican attacks.
“You know me. You know my heart. You know my story, my family’s story. Ask yourself: Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?”
He declared that even as Trump is “trying to scare America,” what’s really causing the nation’s fear is Trump’s own failures. He pointed to a rise in killings this past year, the 180,000 dead Americans from the coronavirus and the economic damage done by the pandemic.
“You want to talk about fear? They’re afraid they’re going to get COVID, they’re afraid they’re going to get sick and die,” Biden said.