By Katie Glueck

Joe Biden on Monday (Aug 31) issued a forceful rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s claim that the former vice president would preside over a nation overwhelmed by disorder and lawlessness, asserting that it was Trump who had made the country unsafe through his erratic and incendiary governing style.

Biden condemned the violence that has occasionally erupted amid largely peaceful protests over racial injustice, and noted that the chaos was occurring on the president’s watch. He said Trump had made things worse by stoking division amid a national outcry over racism and police brutality.

“Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?” Biden said. “We need justice in America. We need safety in America. We’re facing multiple crises — crises that, under Donald Trump, have kept multiplying.”

Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, also pressed a broader argument that the president was endangering Americans with his response to the public health and economic challenges the country confronts.

The address was Biden’s most prominent effort yet to deflect the criticism that Trump and Republicans levelled against him at their convention last week, when they distorted his record on crime and policing. And in a fusillade of tweets over the last 48 hours the president suggested Biden was tolerant of “Anarchists, Thugs & Agitators.”

Speaking at the site of a converted steel mill in Pittsburgh with no audience, in a rare campaign appearance outside eastern Pennsylvania or his home state of Delaware, Biden rejected the suggestion that lawlessness would go unchecked under his leadership. “Ask yourself: Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?” Biden, 77, said. “Really? I want a safe America. Safe from COVID, safe from crime and looting, safe from racially motivated violence, safe from bad cops. Let me be crystal clear: safe from four more years of Donald Trump.”

The former vice president sought to refocus the spotlight on Trump and make the election a referendum on the president’s character and his stewardship of the pandemic. He cast Trump as a destabilizing force who had exacerbated the most urgent problems facing the nation, from the public health crisis, international affairs and unemployment to issues around police brutality, white supremacy and racism.

He repeatedly instructed voters to ignore Trump’s attempts to transfer responsibility to Democrats for the problems unfolding under his administration. “He keeps telling us if he was president you’d feel safe,” Biden said. “Well, he is president, whether he knows it or not.”

The exchange between Biden and Trump over public safety, law enforcement and civil rights also represents a significant, high-profile clash in an election that is now just nine weeks away. The issue is emerging as a test of whether Trump can shift voters’ focus away from the coronavirus pandemic and persuade a small slice of undecided white voters to embrace him as a flawed but fierce defender of “law and order”, or whether Biden can counter that appeal by assailing the president as a provocateur of racial division and social disorder.

Biden took pains to differentiate between his support for peaceful protests and his opposition to acts of destruction. “Rioting is not protesting,” he said. “Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted.”

He promised he would seek to “lower the temperature in this country,” something he suggested Trump was unable to do. “He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it,” Biden said.

At a briefing late Monday, Trump declined to condemn his supporters’ use of paintballs and pepper spray against protesters in Portland, Oregon, over the weekend. He used the bulk of his time at the podium to criticize Democrats and Biden, saying, “for months Joe Biden has repeated the monster lie that this is a peaceful protest,” and falsely claiming that the former vice president blamed police and law enforcement for the violence that was flaring.

Much of the Republican argument against Biden on “law and order” issues is rooted in false claims about his positions. But some Democrats worry that Biden has not been public enough in laying out his own views. Concerned allies have been on the phone with Biden’s team in recent days, urging him to get out more.

“I’m worried because I think Donald Trump cannot win the election based on what he has done as president,” Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor, said Sunday. “So therefore he has to find some way to make his opposition the issue.”

Biden’s visit to Pittsburgh, where he also delivered pizza to fire-fighters, was a departure from a schedule that has largely restricted him to campaigning from Delaware since the coronavirus shuttered the campaign trail in March. Advisers intensely debated whether he should visit Wisconsin on Monday, ultimately deciding against it, but discussions continue about a possible trip to the state. Last week a white Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, multiple times, sparking outrage, protests and clashes that in some cases turned violent.

Trump is expected to visit Kenosha on Tuesday, though a growing chorus of Wisconsin officials have urged him to reconsider amid a tense environment on the ground.

A white teenager who has expressed support for Trump was charged with homicide after two demonstrators were shot to death in Kenosha last week. In Portland on Saturday, a man wearing a hat with the insignia of a right-wing group was shot and killed as a caravan of Trump supporters drove around the city and at times clashed with counter-protesters. The episode prompted tweets from Trump seeking to pin the blame on the Democrats, part of a barrage of online communication by the president that promoted fringe conspiracy theories.

“He may believe mouthing the words ‘law and order’ makes him strong, but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows how weak he is,” Biden said.

-New York Times