‘I won’t fan the flames of hate’: Biden blasts Trump in Philly

Biden called for police reform and also condemned violence and vandalism. But he faulted Trump most of all, zeroing in on the president’s Rose Garden address Monday evening when he announced a military response to the protests and riots that have emanated from Minneapolis to rock cities across the U.S., including Washington.

Moments before Trump spoke, law enforcement used flash-bang grenades and rubber bullets to clear an apparently peaceful crowd from Lafayette Square, across from the White House. With the park cleared, Trump walked across to visit St. John’s Church, where a small fire had been set during the weekend amid rioting, and held up a Bible for a photo up.

“The president held up the Bible at St John’s Church yesterday. I just wish he opened it once in a while, instead of brandishing it,” Biden said. “If he opened it, he could have learned something that we’re all called to love one another as we love ourselves. It’s really hard work. But it’s the work of America. Donald Trump isn’t interested in doing that work.”

Biden said Trump, instead, is sweeping away “the guardrails that have long protected our democracy.”

“In addition to the Bible, he might also want to open the U.S. Constitution. If he did, he’d find the First Amendment,” Biden said, reading the passage about the “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.’”

Biden’s speech marked the latest evolution of a campaign that until recently was literally stuck in the basement of his home in Wilmington, Del., where he has ridden out the coronavirus pandemic since mid-March. Though he has been criticized from both the left and right for the strategy, Biden has seen his poll numbers rise against Trump, whose handling of the pandemic was widely panned.

As the nation began slowly opening back up amid the pandemic, Floyd’s death led to the nationwide unrest and gave Biden impetus to start leaving quarantine for the campaign trail to contrast his leadership style with Trump’s. Biden met with protesters in Delaware over the weekend and with black leaders at a Wilmington church on Monday.

In reaction to the speech, the Trump campaign zeroed in on Biden’s campaign staffers offering to bail out people arrested in Minneapolis after the protests in the city that turned violent.

“Joe Biden spent days hiding in his basement while the country was rocked to its core. When Joe Biden and his team finally emerged, their initial reaction was to bail out the criminals that burned, looted and destroyed Minneapolis,” Trump spokeswoman Melissa Reed said.

“While livelihoods were decimated, the Biden team was focused on raising money to bail out the criminals arrested. President Donald Trump was focused on restoring peace and pursuing justice for George Floyd and the victims of the violence. A stark contrast in values.”

Biden, though, leveled a values-based attack against Trump, pointing to incendiary comments by the president that echoed the words of two segregation-era law enforcement officers in Miami, Fla., and Birmingham, Ala.

“When you tweet the words ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’ — those weren’t the words of a president. They were the words of a racist Miami police chief from the 1960s,” Biden said. “When he tweeted that protesters ‘would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs … that’s when people would have been really badly hurt.’ Those weren’t the words of a president — those were the kind of words a Bull Connor would have used unleashing his dogs.”

Biden emphasized how Floyd’s last words — “I can’t breathe” — first became a rallying cry in 2014 when another black man, Eric Garner, died after a struggle with New York police officers that was caught on video.

The officer in Floyd’s death has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. But protests against widespread racial injustice in the U.S. have persisted, with some calling on prosecutors to charge other officers as accomplices in Floyd’s death.

Though Biden condemned both the violence and police brutality, his speech focused heavily on racial injustice and the unrest. He reiterated his pledge to establish a national police oversight board, called on Congress to pass “real police reform” and plugged Democratic legislation to outlaw police choke holds as well as “to stop transferring weapons of war to police forces, to improve oversight and accountability, to create a model use of force standard.”

“I promise you this,” Biden said, “I won’t traffic in fear and division. I won’t fan the flames of hate. I will seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued this country — not use them for political gain.”

Source: politico.com
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