Democratic nominee Joe Biden today unequivocally condemned violence on all sides after a man was fatally shot Saturday night during a clash between supporters of President Trump and anti-racism protesters.
Meanwhile, Trump unleashed an especially intense barrage of Twitter messages overnight and this morning, embracing fringe conspiracy theories claiming that the coronavirus death toll has been exaggerated and that street protests are actually an organized coup d’état against him
As Biden prepares to address civil unrest this week, he is looking to set a marker for Trump and put the burden on him to speak to all sides on an issue that is roiling America and the presidential campaign.
The Trump campaign has sought to paint Biden as unwilling to condemn the violent protests that have unfolded in places like Portland and Kenosha, despite the former vice president having done so several times.
In the wake of a flood of tweets and retweets by Trump that defended aggressive actions by his supporters in Portland, Biden demanded that the president help “lower the temperature.”
“The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable. Shooting in the streets of a great American city is unacceptable. I condemn this violence unequivocally. I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right. And I challenge Donald Trump to do the same.”
“It does not matter if you find the political views of your opponents abhorrent, any loss of life is a tragedy. Today there is another family grieving in America, and Jill and I offer our deepest condolences.”
“We must not become a country at war with ourselves. A country that accepts the killing of fellow Americans who do not agree with you. A country that vows vengeance toward one another. But that is the America that President Trump wants us to be, the America he believes we are.”
Biden continued: “What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters? He is recklessly encouraging violence.”
“He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong – but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is. He may think that war in our streets is good for his reelection chances, but that is not presidential leadership – or even basic human compassion.”
“Donald Trump has been president for almost four years. The temperature in the country is higher, tensions run stronger, divisions run deeper. And all of us are less safe because Donald Trump can’t do the job of the American president.”
In a concentrated predawn burst, Trump posted or reposted 89 messages between 5:49 a.m. and 8:05 a.m. on top of 18 the night before, many of them inflammatory comments or assertions about violent clashes in Portland, Ore., where a man wearing the hat of a far-right, pro-Trump group was shot and killed Saturday after a large group of Trump’s supporters traveled through the streets.
In the weekend blast of Twitter messages, Trump also embraced a call to imprison Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House, attacked CNN and NPR, embraced a supporter charged with murder, mocked Biden, and repeatedly assailed the mayor of Portland, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call demanding his resignation.
One of the most incendiary messages was a retweet of a program from the One America News Network, a pro-Trump channel that advances extreme theories and that the president has turned to when he feels that Fox News has not been supportive enough.
The message he retweeted Saturday night promoted a segment accusing demonstrators of secretly plotting Trump’s downfall.
“According to the mainstream media, the riots & extreme violence are completely unorganized,” the tweet said. “However, it appears this coup attempt is led by a well funded network of anarchists trying to take down the President.” Accompanying it was an image of a promo for a segment titled: “America Under Siege: The Attempt to Overthrow President Trump.”
Trump likewise reposted messages asserting that the real death toll from the coronavirus is only around 9,000 — not 182,000 — because the others who died also had other health issues and most were of an advanced age.
Trump also retweeted a message calling for Cuomo to be locked up because of the high death toll from the coronavirus in New York nursing homes earlier in the pandemic.
“#KillerCuomo should be in jail,” said the message by the actor James Woods, a strong supporter of the president’s.
And Trump even “liked” a tweet that offered support for Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Trump supporter who has been charged with homicide after two demonstrators were shot to death in Kenosha, Wis.
“Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump,” the tweet said.
Cuomo responded on his own Twitter feed a few hours later, pointing to the Trump administration’s failure to contain the pandemic.
“The White House has learned nothing from COVID,” Mr. Cuomo wrote. “National threats require national leadership. It’s been 6 months without a national strategy on testing or mask mandate. Only the federal government has the power to go to war with COVID. They are failing and the nation suffers.”
Jacob Blake’s attorney Benjamin Crump said today that Trump has not contacted the Blake family ahead of his planned visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, more than a week after police shot Blake seven times in the back.
Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris spoke with the Blake family for over an hour last week.