Courting Black voters he needs to win reelection, President Biden on Monday denounced the "poison" of white supremacy in America, declaring at the site of a deadly racist church shooting in South Carolina that such ideology has no place in America, "not today, tomorrow or ever."
Mr. Biden spoke from the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church, where in 2015 nine Black parishioners were shot to death by the White stranger who had invited to join their Bible study. The Democratic president's speech followed his blunt remarks last Friday on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, in which he excoriated former President Donald Trump for "glorifying" rather than condemning political violence.
At Mother Emanuel, Mr. Biden said "the word of God was pierced by bullets of hate, propelled not just by gunpowder, but by poison."
"White supremacy," he said, the view by some whites that they are superior to everyone else is a "poison that for too long has haunted this nation. This has no place in America, not today, tomorrow or ever."
The speech was a grim way to kick off a presidential campaign, particularly for someone known for his unfailing optimism and belief that American achievements are limitless. But it's a reflection of the emphasis Mr. Biden and his campaign are placing on energizing Black voters amid deepening concerns among Democrats that the president could lose support from this critical constituency heading into the election.
It was South Carolina's support for Mr. Biden that catapulted him to clinch the nomination during the Democratic primaries in 2020. The president has accurately attributed much of his success to Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who sat behind the president as he spoke on Monday.
A recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll found one in five Black voters who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 now say they will support a third-party candidate in November. A concern among Democrats is that Black voters might stay home in November. During a gaggle with reporters after the speech Monday, Biden campaign officials told reporters dismissed those polls and said voters would decide the election.
The president's campaign advisers and aides hoped the South Carolina visit would successfully lay out the stakes of the race in unequivocal terms three years after the cultural saturation of Trump's words and actions while he was president. It's a contrast they hope will be paramount to voters in 2024.
Mr. Biden also used the speech, his second major campaign event of the year, to thank the state's Black voters, recognizing their and Clyburn's indispensable support in 2020.
"I owe you," he said.
Mr. Biden's speech was briefly interrupted when several people upset by his staunch support for Israel in its war against Hamas called out that if he really cared about lives lost he would call for a cease-fire in Gaza to help innocent Palestinians who are being killed under Israel's bombardment. The chants of "cease-fire now" were drowned out by audience members chanting "four more years."
The president stopped his speech to address their concerns.
"I understand the passion," he told them.
The president also swiped at Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, and Trump, though he did not name either one.
Haley spent several days on the defensive for not explicitly naming slavery as the root cause of the Civil War when the question was posed to her by a participant at a campaign event. Mr. Biden called it a "lie" that the war was about states' rights.
"So let me be clear, for those who don't seem to know: Slavery was the cause of the Civil War. There's no negotiation about that."
He also noted the scores of failed attempts by Trump in the courts to overturn the 2020 election in an attempt to hold onto power, as well as the former president's embrace of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
"Let me say what others cannot: We must reject political violence in America. Always, not sometimes. Always. It's never appropriate," Mr. Biden said. He said "losers are taught to concede when they lose. And he's a loser," referring to Trump.
The president delivered his first campaign speech of the year outside Valley Forget last Friday, Jan. 5, nearly three years to the date after Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to prevent Mr. Biden's ascent to the White House.
It was June 17, 2015, when a 21-year-old White man walked into the church and, intending to ignite a race war, shot and killed nine Black parishioners and wounded one more. Mr. Biden was vice president when he attended the memorial service in Charleston.
The president's aides and allies say the shootings are among the critical moments when the nation's political divide started to sharpen and crack. Though Trump, the current Republican presidential front-runner, was not in office at the time and has called the shooting "horrible," Mr. Biden is seeking to tie Trump's current rhetoric to such violence.
Two years after the attack, as the "Unite The Right" gathering of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted in violent clashes with counterprotesters. Trump said merely that "there is blame on both sides."
Mr. Biden and his aides argue it's all part of the same problem: Trump refused to condemn the actions of the white nationalists at that gathering. He's repeatedly used rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are "poisoning the blood of our country," yet insisted he had no idea that one of the world's most reviled and infamous figures once used similar words.
And Trump has continually repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election, as well as his assertion that the Capitol rioters were patriotic. He's called the long prison sentences handed down for some offenders — whom he calls "hostages" and were convicted of crimes like assaulting police officers or seditious conspiracy — "one of the saddest things."
At Mother Emanuel, Mr. Biden revisited themes from the Jan. 6 anniversary speech he delivered on Friday. He has repeatedly suggested that democracy itself is on the ballot, asking whether it is still "America's sacred cause."
Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Mr. Biden and three other felony cases, argues that Mr. Biden and other top Democrats are themselves seeking to undermine democracy by using the legal system to thwart the campaign of the president's chief rival.
In an interview with The Associated Press before Mr. Biden's appearance, Malcolm Graham, a brother of Charleston church victim Cynthia Graham-Hurd, said threat of racism and hate-fueled violence is part of a needed national conversation about race and American democracy.
"Racism, hatred and discrimination continue to be the Achilles' heel of America, of our nation," said Graham, a city councilman in Charlotte, North Carolina. "Certainly, what happened to the Emanual Nine years ago is a visible example of that. What happened in Buffalo, years later, where people were killed under similar circumstances, shows that racism and discrimination are still real and it's even in our politics."
Graham said it was shameful that some politicians still struggle to link the Civil War and slavery. He said he feels the Trump administration was a preview of what it's like to have a new generation of unrepentant white nationalists in power.
"As a nation, we can't eradicate racism, hatred and discrimination, if it's in the Oval Office," he said. "We have to chart a different course."
After his speech, the president visited a restaurant called Hannibal's Kitchen with Clyburn, greeting voters. He also recorded a local radio interview.
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