To woo black voters, he must win reelection, President

Joe

Biden on Monday denounced the poison of white supremacy in America, saying at the scene of a deadly racist shooting at a South Carolina church that such an ideology has no place in America, not today, tomorrow or ever.

Biden spoke from the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church, where nine Black parishioners were shot dead in 2015 by the white stranger they invited to their Bible study. The Democratic president’s speech followed his blunt comments last Friday, on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, in which he castigated the former president.

Donald

Trump because he glorifies political violence instead of condemning it.

At Mother Emanuel, Biden said

for the predominantly black audience,

“The word of God was pierced by bullets of hatred, propelled not only by gunpowder, but by poison.

for the predominantly African-American audience

: What’s that poison?

White supremacy, he said, calling white people’s beliefs that they are superior to everyone else a poison that has haunted this nation for too long. This has no place in America, not today, tomorrow or ever.”

It’s a grim way to start a presidential campaign, especially for a man known for his unerring optimism and belief that American achievement is limitless. But his campaign advisers and aides say it’s necessary to lay out the stakes in no uncertain terms, three years after the cultural saturation of Trump’s words and actions during his presidency. And it’s an attempt to create the contrast they hope will be paramount to voters in 2024.

It shows the campaign coming together right now,” said former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield. We’re facing a fundamental threat to our democracy in the form of Donald Trump, and instead of a cookie-cutter launch, you know, here are my five policy platforms. talking to people in a way that connects and explains the major challenges that come our way.

It was June 17, 2015, when a 21-year-old white man walked into the church and, intent on starting a race war, shot and killed nine black parishioners and injured another. Biden was vice president when he attended the memorial service in Charleston, where he was president

Barracks

Obama sang the famous ‘Amazing Grace’.

Biden’s aides and allies say the shootings were among critical moments when the country’s political divide began to widen and narrow. Although Trump, the current Republican presidential candidate, was not in power at the time and has mentioned the horrific shooting, Biden is trying to link Trump’s current rhetoric to such violence.

Two years after the attack,

bee

the Unite The Right’ rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville, V

irgini

a., broke out in violent clashes with counter-protesters. Trump simply said that both sides are to blame.”

Biden and his aides claim it’s all part of the same problem: Trump refused to condemn the actions of the white nationalists at that rally. He has repeatedly used rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the US illegally are poisoning our country’s blood, but insisted he had no idea one of the world’s most maligned and infamous figures could ever use similar words used.

And Trump has continually repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election, as well as his claim that the Capitol rioters were patriotic. He cites the long prison sentences imposed on some of the perpetrators he holds hostage, convicted of crimes such as assaulting police officers or seditious conspiracy, as one of the saddest things.

Representative James E.

Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina, said the election will determine the fate of American democracy, our freedoms, and whether this country will stand up to hate and vitriol embodied by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, a reference to Trumps Make America Great Again slogan.

Few places embody this commitment better than Mother Emanuel AME, a church that has witnessed the horrors of hate-fueled political violence and a church that has spoken to the conscience of this nation and shown us the way forward after moments of division and despair, Clyburn said in a statement.

In his anniversary speech on January 6, Biden told people in the audience that Trump doesn’t care about their future. Trump now promises a massive campaign of revenge and retaliation for his words for years to come,” Biden said. They were his words, not mine. He went on to say that he would be a dictator on day one.

Biden has repeatedly suggested that democracy itself is on the agenda this year, questioning whether it is still America’s sacred cause.

Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden and three other felony cases, argues that Biden and other top Democrats themselves are trying to undermine democracy by using the legal system to undermine Biden’s campaign to thwart its main rival.

South Carolina is the first official Democratic nominating contest in which Biden wants to show his political strength this year, and where his 2020 turnaround on the road to the White House began.

In an interview with the Associated Press before Biden’s church appearance, Malcolm Graham, the younger brother of Charleston church victim Cynthia Graham-Hurd, said he planned to thank the president for raising the subject of extremism.

Talking about the threat of racism and hate-fueled violence is part of a necessary national conversation about race and American democracy, said Graham, a city council member in Charlotte, N.C.

North Carolina

.

Racism, hatred and discrimination remain the Achilles heel of America, of our nation, he said. What happened to the Emanual nine years ago is certainly a visible example of this. What happened years later in Buffalo, where people were murdered under similar circumstances, shows that racism and discrimination are still real and even exist in our politics.

Graham, a former North Carolina senator, said it was shameful that some politicians still struggled to connect the Civil War and slavery, and that others have attacked diversity, equality and inclusion programs for political gain. He believes the Trump administration was a foretaste of what it would be like if a new generation of unrepentant white nationalists were in power.

As a nation, we cannot eradicate racism, hatred and discrimination if it happens in the Oval Office, he said. We must take a different course.

Biden is scheduled to meet with families of the church shooting victims, and it is at these times that his aides believe he is most effective.

This is a personal strength of his, and his ability to do this in an emotional way that connects with people cannot be underestimated,” said Bedingfield. “Because these are difficult things to talk about. And it’s hard to talk about it in a way that doesn’t make people feel defeated. And he can.