PITTSBURGH (AP) — The battle over who can keep Americans safe after recent deadly protests has emerged as the sharpest dividing line for the presidential campaign’s final weeks, with Joe Biden on Monday condemning the violence and President Donald Trump defending a supporter accused of fatally shooting two men.
While the president blamed Biden, his Democratic foe, for siding with “anarchists,” Biden, in his most direct attacks yet, accused Trump of causing the divisions that have ignited the violence. He delivered an uncharacteristically blistering speech and distanced himself from radical forces involved in altercations.
Biden said of Trump: “He doesn’t want to shed light, he wants to generate heat, and he’s stoking violence in our cities. He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it.”
Trump blames radical troublemakers whom he says are stirred up and backed by Biden. But when he was asked about one of his own supporters who was charged with killing two men during the mayhem in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he declined to denounce the killings and suggested that 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.
After a confrontation in which he fatally shot one man, police say, Rittenhouse fell while being chased by people trying to disarm him.
“That was an interesting situation,” said Trump. “He was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like, and he fell. And then they very violently attacked him. … He was in very big trouble. He would have been — you probably would’ve been killed.”
Trump’s refusal to condemn the shootings could add to tensions in Kenosha when he visits Tuesday. He’s going despite pleas from Wisconsin’s Democratic governor to stay away for fears of sparking further tumult.
In Kenosha, the National Guard has been deployed to quell demonstrations in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man.
Trump said his appearance could “increase enthusiasm” in Wisconsin, which is a hotly contested battleground state in the presidential race.
Biden saw Trump’s impact far differently, accusing the president of “poisoning” the nation’s values.
In a statement after Trump’s news conference comments, he said: “Today, I traveled to Pittsburgh to explain how the president was making America less safe — on COVID, on the economy, on crime, on racism, on violence — and reiterated my clear message that violence is not the answer to any of these problems. …
“Tonight, the president declined to rebuke violence. He wouldn’t even repudiate one of his supporters who is charged with murder because of his attacks on others. He is too weak, too scared of the hatred he has stirred to put an end to it.”
In Pittsburgh, the former vice president also tried to refocus the race on what has been its defining theme — Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that has left more than 180,000 Americans dead — after a multi-day onslaught by the president’s team to make the campaign about the violence rattling American cities.
Biden himself has largely remained near his home in Delaware to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but he stepped out in a new phase of his campaign on Monday, making a speech in Pittsburgh and a brief stop at a local firehouse.
Trump and his campaign team believe that the more the national discourse is about anything other than the virus, the better it is for the president. They have seized upon the recent unrest in Portland, Oregon — where a Trump supporter was shot and killed — and Kenosha, leaning hard into a defense of law and order while suggesting that Biden is powerless to stop extremists.
Biden rejected the charge, firmly decrying the clashes.
