‘We Need Safety in America,’ Biden Says, Denouncing Trump
Joseph R. Biden Jr. said that he would keep Americans safer than President Trump has in a speech aimed at deflecting criticism from Republicans that Mr. Biden would preside over a country wracked by lawlessness.
Does anyone believe there’d less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected? We need justice in America. We need safety in America. We’re facing multiple crises, crises that under Donald Trump have kept multiplying — Covid, economic devastation, unwarranted police violence, emboldened white nationalists. I believe if I were president today, the country would be safer and we’d see a lot less violence and here’s why: I have said we must address the issue of racial injustice. I’ve personally spoken to George Floyd’s family and to Jacob Blake’s family. I know their pain, and so do you. I know the justice they seek, and so do you. An average of a thousand people dying every day in the month of August — do you really feel safer under Donald Trump? Mr. Trump, you want to talk about fear? Do you know what people are afraid of in America? They’re afraid they’re going to get Covid. They’re afraid they’re going to get sick and die. And that is in no small part because of you.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Monday issued a forceful rebuttal to President Trump’s claim that the former vice president would preside over a country wracked by disorder and lawlessness, asserting that it was Mr. Trump who had made the country unsafe through his erratic and incendiary governing style.
“This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country,” Mr. Biden said in his most prominent effort yet to deflect the barrage of criticism Republicans levied against him at their convention last week. “He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it.”
Against a backdrop of street violence unfolding in multiple cities across the nation, Mr. Biden condemned destruction, noted that chaos was unfolding on the president’s watch, and charged that Mr. Trump had made the country unsafe, both by stoking division amid an outcry over racism and police brutality and through his handling of the coronavirus crisis and the economy.
“Rioting is not protesting,” Mr. Biden said of the unrest. “Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting, it’s lawlessness plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted.”
At another point, Mr. Biden expressed incredulity at the idea that he is some kind of “radical.”
“Ask yourself: do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?” Mr. Biden, 77, said. “Really? I want a safe America. Safe from Covid, safe from crime and looting, safe from racially-motivated violence, safe from bad cops. Let me be crystal clear: safe from four more years of Donald Trump.”
Mr. Biden promised to work to bring together those protesting for racial justice — a cause he supports — with police officers, and said he would unite the country more broadly as he also condemned police shootings of Black Americans.
At one point, Mr. Biden challenged the president directly.
“Mr. Trump, you want to talk about fear?” Mr. Biden asked. “Do you know what people are afraid of in America? They’re afraid they’re going to get Covid. They’re afraid they’re going to get sick and die. And that is no small part because of you.” He noted that more police officers had died from the coronavirus than were killed on patrol.
How Mr. Biden handles the unrest playing out in places including the battleground state of Wisconsin may shape the contours of the fall campaign, at a moment when a number of Democrats have urged his team to be more visible on the issue. On Monday, he cast his candidacy as a force for calm — as president he would be “looking to lower the temperature in this country, not raise it” — and described Mr. Trump as having a corrosive and “toxic” effect on the country.
“Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?” Mr. Biden said.
On Election Day, he said, voters will decide, “Will we rid ourselves of this toxin?”
Much of the Republican argument against Mr. Biden on “law and order” issues is rooted in false claims about Mr. Biden’s positions. He opposes defunding the police, for example, though Republicans have inaccurately said he supports that policy.
And contrary to Republican distortions of his record on battling crime, Mr. Biden, to the discomfort of progressives and some criminal justice advocates, played a key role in shepherding the 1994 crime bill into law. The bill was supported at the time by a wide array of figures including President Bill Clinton and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was then New York’s mayor, but many experts now associate it with mass incarceration.
But some Democrats worry that Mr. Biden has not been visible enough in laying out his own views on such searing issues, and he sought to put those concerns to rest in Pittsburgh.
Despite pleas from state and local officials, Mr. Trump plans to travel on Tuesday to Kenosha, Wis., where disturbances broke out after a white police officer shot and paralyzed Jacob Blake, a Black man. Two people protesting the police shooting were shot and killed last week, and a 17-year-old, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, who attended a Trump rally earlier this year, was charged in their killing.
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