Joe Biden’s descent into pandering to the left wing Democrat base has reached a new low with the speech he delivered at Philadelphia’s City Hall on Tuesday. Instead of focusing on how to stop the rampant violence, destruction and looting across the country that have endangered innocent people of all races and have dishonored the memory of George Floyd, Biden used his speech to blame President Trump. Biden followed the lead of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had issued an inane joint statement ignoring the violence completely and condemning President Trump’s determination to restore law and order.

“Donald Trump has turned this country into a battlefield riven by old resentments and fresh fears,” Biden said during his speech. “More interested in serving the passions of his base than the needs of the people in his care,” Biden added. “For that’s what the presidency is: a duty of care — to all of us, not just our voters, not just our donors, but all of us.”

Biden has proven that he can deliver nice-sounding platitudes. But Biden has shown little if any care about the safety and security of ordinary Americans of all races, ethnicities, and political persuasions. Instead he played the race card repeatedly.

Biden sarcastically suggested that President Trump should “open the US constitution once in a while.” He mentioned the First Amendment’s protections of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition their government for redress and grievances.” Biden should take his own advice and read the entire Constitution if he wants to assume the awesome responsibilities of the presidency. Biden should also read up on how George Washington, the nation’s first president, handled the Whiskey Rebellion. President Washington used the display of overwhelming federal military force to quell an insurrection after the rioters refused to back down. Washington wrote in a letter that he had no choice but to subdue the rioters lest they otherwise would “shake the government to its foundation.” He recognized that the government can only secure the American people’s rights and liberties if it can secure the lives and property of the American people from unrestrained mob violence.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution states that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Article IV, Section 4 states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature can-not be convened) against domestic Violence.”

Congress has delegated to the president the authority to use the armed forces he “considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in certain circumstances. The president may invoke this power, for example, where the “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a State “so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection.”

President Trump fully understands his preeminent presidential responsibility. “I swore an oath to uphold the laws of our nation, and that is exactly what I will do,” President Trump said in the remarks he delivered in the White House Rose Garden. The radicals hijacking legitimate peaceful protests for their own ideological and opportunistic reasons across the country have gone way beyond civil disobedience. They have engaged in systematic insurrection against lawful government authorities. Rioters were reportedly responsible for killing a security officer with the Federal Protective Service. They have hurled Molotov cocktails in the direction of police and, as reported in St. Louis, four police officers were hit with gunfire. An NYPD officer was struck by a hit-and-run driver. Another NYPD officer was beaten. Rioters have also burnt police vehicles and a police precinct building.

Rioters have also been engaged in domestic violence, endangering the lives and properties of innocent Americans. Rioters have looted and burnt down businesses. They tried to burn down Washington D.C’s historic St. John’s Church on Sunday evening. They have beaten up people trying to protect their property from being destroyed, looted or vandalized.

In short, insurrection and domestic violence have plagued the nation’s cities night after night. Police forces have been overwhelmed. President Trump has full legal authority, as a last resort, to invoke the constitutional and statutory powers he possesses to use such force as he deems necessary to suppress both the insurrection and domestic violence. This has nothing to do with race. African-Americans have seen their own dreams go up in flames at the hands of the rioters.

Biden, his fellow Democrats and the liberal Trump-hating media have expressed far more concern over President Trump’s stern warnings to the rioters than they have about the wanton violence and destruction to lives and property the rioters have caused. The president’s critics, including Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse, have even gone so far as to label President Trump’s honoring of St. John’s Church with his presence and holding up a Bible as a photo op. They couldn’t be more wrong.

The image of the president of the United States with Bible in hand in front of St. John’s Church the day after it was attacked is a peaceful but strong demonstration of solidarity with the church that is known as the Church of the Presidents. It is a symbolic rebuke to the lawless mobs who are trying to destroy the hallowed institutions and rule of law in our country.

As for clearing out the “peaceful” protesters from Lafayette Park so that President Trump could walk safely over to the church that arsonists had tried to burn down the night before, the president must be protected from any would-be assassin hiding among the crowd and armed with a concealed weapon. The clearance action did not prevent the protesters from assembling and marching elsewhere for the 30 to 45 minutes remaining until Washington D.C.’s 7 pm curfew went into effect. The constitutional right to peacefully protest does not mean the protesters are free to engage in mass gatherings anywhere they like whenever they like.

Some Democrats like Oregon Senator Ron Wyden are living in their own alternative world. “The fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens,” Wyden tweeted after President Trump delivered his Rose Garden remarks. “I fear for our country tonight and will not stop defending America against Trump’s assault.” Has Wyden been in seclusion for the last several nights without access to the images of violence all over the country? Or is he just out to score cheap political points rather than focus on defeating a common threat to all of us?

The United States of America is under assault, but not by President Trump. The violent rioters have exploited for their own ideological and opportunistic reasons the legitimate peaceful protests over the George Floyd tragedy to terrorize innocent Americans and provoke the police into overreacting. We are not talking about a few spontaneous isolated incidents here and there. We are talking about well-coordinated nationwide riots organized via social media and carried out with fascist-like tactics.

Joe Biden offered no concrete ideas of how he would deal with the insurrection and domestic violence besetting our country. Even after briefly condemning the real violence during his Philadelphia speech, he immediately pivoted and tried to blame President Trump for all the ills of the country. “We have to be vigilant about the violence that’s being done by this incumbent president to our economy and to the pursuit of justice,” Biden declared.

Biden’s speech will be well-received by the adoring media. They will fawn all over Biden’s pious calls for unity and his sound bite that “Donald Trump has turned this country into a battlefield.” But Biden has offered only platitudes and finger pointing against his political opponent. In crises such as we are now facing, decisive actions, not hollow rhetoric and partisan attacks, are required from a true leader. President Trump is rising to that challenge. Biden, with all the time he had to make a real difference as senator and vice president, accomplished nothing of value in solving any of the nation’s problems. As his party’s presumptive nominee for president, Biden is failing the test of leadership once again.