Biden rips Trump over race in South Carolina return

Source: Politico




The former vice president stoked speculation about another presidential run with a speech urging Americans to stand up to hate groups in a key early primary state.

By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI 09/23/2017 10:55 PM EDT

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Former Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday evening urged Americans to stand up to hate groups – and took direct aim at President Donald Trump, who he said “has publicly proclaimed the moral equivalency of Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and those who oppose their hate.”

Speaking at the centennial fundraising dinner for the Charleston branch of the NAACP, Biden said, “This is a moment for this nation to declare what this president can’t with any clarity, consistency, or vision: there is no place in America for hate groups.”

The speech at the Gaillard Center — across the street from the Mother Emanuel AME church where nine African-American churchgoers were murdered in 2015 by a white supremacist hoping to incite a race war — was one of Biden’s first since the fatal violence last month at a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The address was the latest, and most searing, in Biden’s series of denunciations of the president and the current tenor of politics. It’s been a rapidly escalating effort that far outstrips former President Barack Obama’s Trump-era political work — and which has poured fuel on the speculation that Biden is considering a third run for the White House.




Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/23/biden-rips-trump-over-race-in-south-carolina-return-243060