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Trump ’Legitimizes the Dark Side of Human Nature’ In Kenosha Speech - Biden

Trump ’Legitimizes the Dark Side of Human Nature’ In Kenosha Speech - Biden
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By Staff, Agencies

Joe Biden said US President Donald Trump's remarks following racist violence in Charlottesville in 2017 had legitimized "the dark side of human nature" as the nation reels from police killings of black Americans and weeks of unrest.

During a community meeting at a church in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Democratic presidential candidate said he had been inspired to re-enter public office following Trump’s "very fine people" remarks, referring to demonstrations that included neo-Nazi groups and far-right violence against antiracist protesters.

"No president has ever said anything like it," the former vice president said at Grace Lutheran Church on Thursday. "It legitimizes the dark side of human nature."

Trump’s comments "exposed what had not been paid enough attention to, the underlying racism that has been institutionalized" in the US, Biden said.

Biden – who also met with the family of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man from Kenosha left paralyzed after an officer fired seven shots into his back – listened to faith leaders, organizers, small business owners and first responders during the visit, amid an "inflection point in American history" for reform.

"I had an opportunity to spend some time with Jacob on the phone. He's out of ICU," Biden said. "We spoke for about 15 minutes ... He talked about how nothing was going to defeat him, how whether he walked again or not he was not going to give up."

The meeting marked a rare, intimate moment in his 2020 campaign to offer a contrasting vision of the US to Trump’s "law and order" rhetoric, which Biden has said only fans the flames of violence and exploits American vulnerability amid several crises for a campaign of fear.

Biden arrived two days after Trump’s visit on Tuesday during a period of relative calm after the city was rocked not only by the shooting of Blake but by the killings of two protesters by an alleged teenaged suspect defended by the president and his allies.

Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old Trump supporter from Illinois who travelled to Wisconsin for the demonstrations, has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety with a deadly weapon.

Blake family attorney Benjamin Crump, who joined the family by phone to speak with Biden and his wife Jill Biden, said they discussed the "disparate treatment of minorities by police" and the impact of selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate.

"The vice president told the family that be believes the best of America is in all of us and that we need to value our differences as we come together in America's great melting pot," Crump said in a statement. "It was obvious that vice president Biden cared as he extended to Jacob Jr a sense of humanity, treating him as a person worthy of consideration and prayer."

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