"I want to be very clear about all of this: Rioting is not protesting. 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," Biden said in a speech in Pittsburgh. "Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction. It's wrong in every way. It will divide, instead of unite. ... It makes things worse across the board, not better."
He said looting and property damage are a break with the tactics of civil rights champions Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, and "must end."
"We must not burn. We have to build," Biden said.
He said that "the violence we're seeing in Donald Trump's America" is proof that the message of last week's Republican National Convention -- that Trump would seek "law and order," and that the looting and property damage that has taken place in some cities would spread to the suburbs, where Trump needs to win back White voters, if Biden is elected -- is without basis in reality.
Biden harshly condemned Trump's actions amid protests over police brutality and racial injustice, saying that the President's job is to "tell the truth, to be candid, to face facts, to lead, not to incite." He said Trump is "incapable of telling us the truth, incapable of facing the facts and incapable of healing. He doesn't want to shed light, he wants to generate heat, and he's stoking violence in our cities."
Biden also mocked Trump's characterization of him.
"Ask yourself: Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?" Biden said. He said he wants a "safe America" -- a country protected from the coronavirus pandemic, police brutality, rioters and more. And he wants a country, he said, "safe from four more years" of Trump.
"Do you really feel safer under Donald Trump?" Biden asked repeatedly throughout his speech.
He added that Trump is "supposed to be protecting this country. But instead he's rooting for chaos and violence," and is "trying to scare America."
Biden cast himself as a bridge between peaceful protesters who object to police violence that disproportionately affects Black Americans and local elected officials and law enforcement.
"I'm confident I can bring the police to the table, as well," Biden said.
The speech comes at a fraught moment, ahead of Trump's Tuesday trip -- against the wishes of Wisconsin's Democratic governor, Tony Evers -- to Kenosha, a city wracked with violence following the police shooting of a 29-year-old Black man, Jacob Blake, the property damage and looting that followed, and the killing of two protesters there.
Trump and the Republican Party last week closed a convention focused on the theme of "law and order," painting a deeply distorted picture of cities subsumed by street violence that would soon spread to the suburbs, where he needs to rebuild his standing with White voters in order to defeat Biden, if he does not win reelection.
The political landscape in the wake of both parties' conventions is murky, though polls this week could make clear whether Biden or Trump received a substantial boost exiting the conventions and whether their content changed the way Americans view issues such as police brutality, protests and civic violence.
Trump appears to be inciting unrest on Twitter, such as praising a convoy of supporters heading into restive Portland, Oregon, as "Great Patriots." He also "liked" a Twitter post encouraging people to read a thread of tweets that in part praised Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old charged with allegedly killing two protestors in Kenosha.
Biden's return to the trail also comes after months in which he has seldom traveled outside the Delaware and Philadelphia areas, with the pandemic leading his campaign's health advisers to conclude that doing so wasn't feasible.
He said he plans to resume swing state travel soon, telling supporters at a recent virtual fundraiser that Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Minnesota are states where visits are in the works.
His wife, Jill Biden, plans on Tuesday to kick off what the campaign is calling a "back-to-school" combination of virtual and in-person events in eight states -- Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Nevada, Minnesota, Arizona and Pennsylvania -- that are all 2020 election battlegrounds, though it's not yet clear how many of those states she will visit in person.
This story has been updated with more from Biden's remarks.
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Biden to say Trump 'makes things worse, not better' in speech on civic violence - CNN
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