“The incumbent president is incapable of telling us the truth,” and “incapable of facing the facts and incapable of healing. He doesn’t want to shed light, he wants to generate heat and he’s stoking violence in our cities.”
That was presidential candidate Joe Biden on Monday, speaking from Mill 19, an historic steel mill in Pittsburgh. The Democrat’s first event since emerging from his basement was not open to the public, though some 100 supporters gathered outside.
“Fires are burning and we have a president who fans the flames, rather than fighting the flames,” Biden proclaimed. “But we must not burn, we have to build.” According to Biden, President
Trump “long ago forfeited any moral leadership,” and was incapable of stopping violence “because for years he had fomented it.”
In Biden’s vision, Trump “may believe mouthing the words ‘law and order’ makes him strong, but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows you how weak he is.” And “does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?”
After months of silence and denial, Biden suddenly contended that “rioting is not protesting. 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.” As the Democrat added, “ask yourself, do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really? I want a safe America.”
Candidate Biden failed to mention that, as Reuters reported, at least 13 of his staffers made donations to a fund that paid bail for rioters in Minneapolis. Biden opposes cash bail as a “modern day debtors prison.”
As a number of reports noted, Joe Biden did not specifically condemn or call out Antifa and allied leftist groups now perpetrating the violence. Biden is on record that Black Lives Matter protests are “a wake-up call for our nation.”
President Trump often praises law enforcement, but no such support emerged from Biden on Monday. The Democrat presidential candidate failed to name victims such as St. Louis police officer David Dorn. As his widow Ann Dorn noted at the Republican National last Thursday, Dorn’s murderers live-streamed his execution.
Biden made no mention of Trump supporter Aaron “Jay” Danielson, shot in the chest during riots in Portland on Saturday. Antifa-BLM activists openly celebrated the murder. The Democrat also failed to note that President Trump had offered to send federal forces to restore law and order, and that Democrat mayors and governors had refused the offer and blamed the president for the violence.
In similar style, Biden did not spell out what, exactly, he would do as president if such deadly violence broke out in major cities. He preferred to blame Trump, the target of leftist Democrats from the day of his inauguration. Sen. Joe Biden was hardly lead voice calling for the peaceful transition of power.
In June of 2017, “strongly anti-Trump” Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson opened fire on Republicans playing baseball in Arlington, Virginia, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise and wounding four others. What Joe Biden thought about this attempted mass murder has yet to emerge in any clarity.
Joe Biden has picked up an endorsement from Angela Davis, the Communist Party candidate for vice president under the Stalinist Gus Hall in 1980 and 1984. Before that, Davis gained fame for supporting violent convicts such as Black Panther George Jackson, who killed a guard at Soledad Prison. Davis brought the “arsenal of weapons” to a California courthouse and during the shootout judge Harold Haley’s head was blown off. As Davis now explains, “to vote for ourselves I think that means that we will have to campaign for and vote for Joe Biden.”
The Delaware cellar-dweller is not fond of fielding questions from reporters, and by all indications the candidate did not do so on Monday. His brief speech, doubtless cobbled together by handlers and endlessly rehearsed, was not exactly understated.
“Mr. Trump, want to talk about fear?” Biden said. “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.” And as the former vice president closed out, “Trump’s been a toxic presence in our nation for four years. We have a decision to make: will we rid ourselves of this toxin or will we make it a permanent part of our nation’s character.”
The president was quick to respond in a tweet. “Just watched what Biden had to say. 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!”
How Joe Biden’s sudden revelation that rioting, looting and arson are “not protesting” will play with the people is uncertain. For his part, President Trump visits Kenosha on Tuesday, despite opposition from Democrat governor Tony Evers.
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