Joe Biden To Meet With Family Of Jacob Blake In Kenosha On Thursday
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will visit Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Thursday, to meet with the family of Jacob Blake, the Black man shot in the back by police more than a week ago.
Biden and his wife, Jill, left Delaware on Thursday morning, en Route to Wisconsin. CBS News confirmed that Biden will meet with members of Blake's family while in Kenosha. He and Kamala Harris, his running mate, have spoken with Blake's family, their attorney Benjamin Crump said Sunday on "Face the Nation."
Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot seven times in the back by a police officer in Kenosha last month. He remains in the hospital and is partially paralyzed.
Biden's visit comes two days after President Donald Trump also went to Kenosha to tour damage from the recent civil unrest and to meet with local law enforcement. Trump did not meet with Blake's family.
The Biden campaign has said the former vice president and his wife also will hold a community meeting in Kenosha "to bring together Americans to heal and address the challenges we face."
Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian had earlier asked both Biden and Trump to delay their plans to visit the city, saying it's "too soon."
Antaramian said he would have preferred both Trump and Biden wait until at least next week to visit.
"Our community has gone through a great deal, and there is no time right now for political politics to be played," he told CNN. "Right now is a time for us to heal, and to be able to look inward and deal with the issues that we have to deal with."
Biden has strongly condemned recent outbreaks of violence in American cities and laid the blame squarely on President Trump's desk, accusing him of "stoking violence" and calling him a "toxic presence."
"Fires are burning and we have a president who fans the flames, rather than fighting the flames," Biden said in his speech. "But we must not burn. We have to build. This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can't stop the violence because for years he's fomented it."
The Trump campaign has leveled the accusation that Biden isn't condemning violence, and would allow it to continue under his watch. But Biden repeatedly pointed out that the violence the nation is seeing is happening under Donald Trump's watch.
"Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?" Biden said. "We need justice in America. And we need safety in America."
The former vice president also highlighted the nation is facing multiple crises at once.
"COVID. Economic devastation. Unwarranted police violence. Emboldened white nationalists. A reckoning on race. Declining faith in a bright American future. The common thread? An incumbent president who makes things worse, not better," Biden said. "An incumbent president who sows chaos rather than providing order."
The "road back begins now," Biden said, adding that people know him, his heart and his family's story.
Trump visited Kenosha on Tuesday, touring the damage caused by weeklong civil unrest in Kenosha following the Jacob Blake shooting. He also met with local law enforcement officials and several Republican elected leaders, condemning what he described as "violent mobs" who damaged or destroyed at least 25 businesses, burned down public buildings, and threw bricks at police officers.
"These are not acts of peaceful protest, but really domestic terror," he said.
The president visited at least one store that had been burned down, and which remains under heavy security, with armored personnel carriers and police in camouflage and carrying automatic rifles blocking the street.
President Trump promised to provide assistance to the owners of damaged businesses.
"We're going to help them, we're going to help them a lot," he said. "We'll help you rebuild."
Mr. Trump also said his administration will provide $1 million to the Kenosha Police Department, $4 million to support small businesses damaged during the civil unrest of the past week, and $42 million to support public safety statewide in Wisconsin – including funding for additional prosecutors, and assistance for victims of crime.
