Biden cranks up contrast with Trump
The former veep is getting out of his Wilmington
basement and attempting to project a ‘stable and steady’ approach.
By NATASHA
KORECKI and MARC CAPUTO
06/01/2020
08:48 PM EDT
Updated:
06/01/2020 08:54 PM EDT
Donald
Trump told governors they could look like weak “jerks” if they don’t “dominate”
protesters, and called for “retribution.”
Joe Biden
held an event with big-city mayors grappling with violent unrest to talk about
their needs and pledged police reforms.
Monday’s
split screen delivered a sharp contrast in temperament and style between the
current president and the presumptive Democratic nominee — and it was by
design.
For the
former vice president, Monday served as an important moment — perhaps the most
significant for Biden since the coronavirus lockdown started. As nationwide
protests and vandalism blazed across America’s large cities, Biden sought to
use the convergence of crises to shake off the image of him as being locked
away in a Wilmington, Del., basement, project a different style of leadership
and take on the mantle of leader of the Democratic opposition.
While Trump
went to a secure bunker below the White House when protesters gathered outside
over the weekend, Biden intentionally chose to take an opposite tack, meeting
Sunday with demonstrators near his Delaware home. Biden’s campaign aides
pledged to bail out jailed protesters; on Twitter, Trump warned protesters
about the prospect of “ominous weapons” and “the most vicious dogs.”
“That’s his
whole purpose, to say, ‘Here’s who I am and here’s the leadership the country
needs right now,’” said Harold Schaitberger, president of the International
Association of Fire Fighters, and a longtime Biden ally. “It needs as much
leadership and as much strength and as much compassion and understanding and
recognition that we still have communities that do have to put up with elements
of discrimination.”
In response
to the violence and chaos that has erupted in many cities after last week’s
killing of a black man under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer,
Trump has largely adopted a defiant tone, repeatedly calling for harsh measures
against protesters.
Biden,
however, used the moment to leave his self-imposed coronavirus quarantine and
call for reconciliation. On Sunday, he met with demonstrators on the streets of
Wilmington. On Monday, he met with black leaders in a church there before
holding a virtual roundtable with the mayors of Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta,
St. Paul and Minneapolis — some of whom have criticized the president for using
inflammatory rhetoric.
“Donald Trump
has made a mockery of America and of our democracy. When I look at Joe Biden,
it is the antithesis of everything that Donald Trump represents each and every
day,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told POLITICO on Monday. “He is
acknowledging our pain and he’s acknowledging that for as painful as it is to
watch the death of George Floyd, there are layers to what we’re seeing play out
in our streets right now. As he acknowledges it, he wants to hear from leaders
across this country on what we can do better, how we can do it better
together.”
The idea
was to show a steady hand during a time of crisis, and that Biden could
constructively engage with young protesters — a purposeful contrast to Trump,
whom Biden’s campaign has portrayed as injecting venom into already volatile
circumstances.
“You gotta
arrest these people and you gotta charge them. … These are terrorists. They’re
looking to do bad things to our country. They’re antifa and they’re radical
left,” Trump said in a call with governors Monday, according to a recording
obtained by POLITICO. “We need law and order in our country. If we don’t have
law and order, we don’t have a country.”
On that
call, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called out the president, saying his tough
talk during the past several days of violence was only exacerbating the
situation.
“I’ve been
extraordinarily concerned about the rhetoric that’s used by you. It’s been
inflammatory — and it’s not OK for that officer to choke George Floyd to death
— but we have to call for calm,” Pritzker, a Democrat, said to Trump. “The
rhetoric that’s coming out of the White House is making it worse. I feel that I
need to say people are feeling real pain out there and we’ve got to have
national leadership in calling for calm.”
J.B.
Pritzker
WHITE HOUSE
“I don’t
like your rhetoric much either,” Trump shot back. Then, referring to
coronavirus, he told the Illinois governor, “I think you could have done a much
better job, frankly.”
The clash
was a dramatic departure from Biden’s virtual roundtable with mayors, where he
listened patiently to the challenges they faced with protesters and the
sensitivities around police violence.
“The
country is crying out for leadership right now, what Joe Biden did today was
not just talk but listen. He went to listen to people in his community and hear
about how they’re grappling with what’s happening in this country. That’s
meaningful leadership,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager.
“What we’ve seen Donald Trump do is sit in the White House and tweet.”
Biden,
appearing Monday at Bethel AME Church near his Delaware home, told a small
group of African American leaders that he would establish a “police oversight
board” in his first 100 days in office and said police needed to be retrained
to avoid brutality.
“There’s a
lot of different things that could change. There’s a lot that could be done,”
Biden said, noting that police brutality isn’t solely limited to white
officers. “The culture has to be dealt with.”
The Trump
campaign criticized Biden’s campaign staffers for announcing they were donating
to a group that is paying bail for those arrested amid the protests in
Minneapolis.
“If Joe
Biden thinks that the looting and the rioting and the destruction in the
streets across this country is something to be proud of, then that’s an
interesting take,” campaign spokesman Rick Gorka said. “The protests to honor
the memory of George Floyd have been hijacked. And for his campaign to be
siding with the criminals that have hijacked this process is disgusting.”
At the same
time, Trump believes that a strong response coupled with federal action like
the one he announced Monday will give comfort to suburban voters — particularly
white women whom he has been hemorrhaging — if they come to fear the spread of
lawlessness, according to two advisers who have spoken with the president.
On Monday
night in a Rose Garden speech, Trump boasted of invoking the 1807 Insurrection
Act, warning of “anarchy” and promising “immediate presidential action to stop
the violence and restore security and safety in America.” Just before the
speech, law enforcement cleared the streets near the White House of
demonstrators.
Still,
there’s concern among top Trump supporters and advisers that the unrest and the
president’s response to it has so far hurt more than it has helped, in part
because it comes amid a pandemic that already appears to have given Biden a
boost over Trump in recent national polls.
Biden’s
public appearances on Sunday and Monday were a step toward addressing what has
been a sensitive issue for his campaign — the “Biden in the basement” theme.
Ron Klain, one of Biden’s top advisers, wrote Monday on social media: “Before
one more person @ me over why @JoeBiden needs to be in public more, I beg you
to tweet at @MSNBC and @CNN and ask them why they didn't carry his TWO public
events today?”
Bedingfield
said the criticism “completely misses the mark.”
“If you
remember a couple of months ago, Donald Trump was giving Rose Garden briefings
and people said that this was going to be the end of the Biden campaign because
Donald Trump had the bully pulpit. Well, what happened? It ended up him doing
more harm than good,” Bedingfield said. “He himself ended up stopping those
briefings because it offered chaos and more turmoil and they didn’t want it.”
Biden is
expected to gradually ramp up in-person events, and eventually out-of-state
travel, as related restrictions are relaxed. According to his campaign, in the
coming days the former vice president will hold more talks like the ones he did
on Monday, reaching out to local leaders and discussing how to balance racial
sensitivities and the importance of law enforcement. The campaign will also
lean into the contrasts in upcoming days and aim to show Biden is “a stable and
steady voice,” in contrast with the rhetoric emanating from the White House.
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