WASHINGTON — Joe Biden said Thursday that President Donald Trump is "rooting for more violence, not less" because he thinks it benefits him politically.
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee reacted to Vice President Mike Pence’s speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night in which he said that people “won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.”
Biden added about Trump, “He views this as a political benefit to him, you know. He's rooting for more violence, not less, and it's clear about that. And what's he doing, he's kept pouring gasoline on the fire.”
The former vice president said he condemns violence in any form, including looting, and then referenced the 17-year-old who faces charges of first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the shooting deaths of two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at a protest earlier this week sparked by the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
“Where's the condemnation coming for that?” Biden said.
When asked if he would consider visiting Kenosha, Biden said, “Yes, I would. I would consider that." But he added he doesn’t want to become “part of the problem” and would want to make sure it could be done safely.
“If I were president, I’d be going,” Biden said. “If I went, what I’d be doing is try to pull together the Black community as well as the white community and sit down and talk and talk about how we get through this.”
Biden suggested that Trump is just making the situation worse, saying, “What bothers me the most is the idea of just pouring gasoline on the racial flames that are burning. That does not justify any of the looting, any of the burning, any of the damage being done by protesters. But the people have a right to be angry, people have a right to protest.”
Regarding Pence’s warning that people would be less safe under Biden, the former vice president said that the “biggest safety issue is all the people dying from COVID — over 1000 yesterday again. ... We're worse off than any other country in the world right now.”
