Joe Biden Speaks To Jacob Blake On The Phone During Wisconsin Visit; 'Nothing Was Going To Defeat Him'
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spoke on the phone Thursday with Jacob Blake, the Black man shot in the back by a white Kenosha police officer last month, and the former vice president said Blake made it clear "he was not going to give up" as he continues to recover from his wounds.
Blake's family has said he is paralyzed from the waist down, but they are holding out hope he can walk again.
Biden and his wife, Jill, met privately with Blake's parents, siblings, and members of his legal team at the Milwaukee airport before traveling to Kenosha, where Blake was shot on Aug. 23.
The former vice president said he also spoke on the phone with Blake himself for about 15 minutes. Biden said Blake is now out of the intensive care unit.
"He talked about how nothing was going to defeat him. How, whether he walked again or not, he was not going to give up," Biden said. "What I came away with was the overwhelming sense of resilience and optimism that they have about the kind of response they're getting."
Blake family attorney Benjamin Crump said the Blake family was grateful to meet with the Bidens, and "very impressed that the Bidens were so engaged and willing to really listen."
"Jacob's mother led them all in prayer for Jacob's recovery. They talked about changing the disparate treatment of minorities in police interactions, the impact of selecting Kamala Harris as a Black woman as his running mate, and Vice President Biden's plans for change," Crump added in a statement Thursday afternoon.
Crump said Blake's family also talked about the need for significant reforms to address systemic racism and excessive use of force by police against minorities.
"The vice president told the family that he believes the best of America is in all of us and that we need to value all our differences as we come together in America's great melting pot. It was very obvious that Vice President Biden cared, as he extended to Jacob Jr. a sense of humanity, treating him as a person worthy of consideration and prayer," Crump said.
After his meeting with Blake's family, Biden traveled to Kenosha for a community meeting at Grace Lutheran Church, where several residents talked to him about the need for the federal government to address the root causes of crime in America; in particular, poverty, inequality in access to healthcare and education, and a loss of trust in police.
"This is the first chance we've had in a generation, in my view, to deal and cut another slice off of institutional racism, toward getting into a place where it changes," Biden said.
Biden spent the better part of an hour listening to several people from Kenosha talk about the need to address issues like widespread unemployment and the need for health care reform, as well as the weeklong civil unrest in Kenosha after Blake's shooting.
Barb DeBerge, co-owner of a gallery in Kenosha, said she's bever seen anything as devastating as what has gone on after the Blake shooting. She said she was lucky the gallery was not among the dozens of Kenosha businesses burned by rioters, but she said the windows were broken, and the gallery was looted, and was only spared from being burned down when a Good Samaritan spotted a rack of burning scarves and took it outside to the sidewalk to extinguish the fire.
Even so, DeBerge said her gallery has remained open throughout the nearly two weeks since the unrest began, although the windows are now boarded up.
"I look at the buildings in our community that are gone," she said. "I don't think I've really grieved as much as I feel I should, because … being a business owner, I have to keep going, and I have to keep working."
Biden said, while he supports peaceful protests, "none of it justifies looting, burning, or anything else."
"So regardless of how angry you are, if you looted and burned, you should be held accountable," he said.
Earlier Thursday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said he was glad Biden went to Wisconsin to meet with Blake family, saying he demonstrated true leadership.
"Unlike President Trump, Joe Biden is demonstrating the compassion that is so much a part of who he is, his soul really. This is a man who had great loss early on in his career as a government official, as well as early on in his life," Pritzker said. "He's somebody who understands loss, and he's somebody who wants very much to have inclusion, equity, and justice."
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. Mr. Trump did not meet with Blake's family.
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.
The Trump campaign has leveled the accusation that Biden isn't sufficiently condemning violence, and would allow it to continue under his watch. But Biden repeatedly has 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; including the pandemic, the resulting economic disaster, multiple examples of police brutality, and a reckoning on institutional racism.
"If you think a little bit about where we are right now, it's been a terrible, terrible wakeup call," Biden said.
Without mentioning him by name, Biden said the nation can't afford another four years of Donald Trump as president.
"This is not about me. It's really not about me, but if we have four more years, we're going to have four years of the same exact thing, only it's going to impact us for a couple of generations," he said. "The idea that this president continues to try to divide us, give succor to the white supremacists, talks about how there's really good people on both sides, talks in ways that are just absolutely – I've never used this regarding a president before – not only incorrect, but immoral. … I'm saying enough is enough. I think there is a chance for a real awakening here."
Biden said, after leaving office as vice president in January 2017, he didn't plan on running for elected office again, until he saw white supremacists marching in Charlottesville in 2017, and heard President Trump say there "very fine people on both sides."
During a white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally, clashes with counterprotesters resulted in 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately driving his car into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the Unite the Right rally, killing 32-year-old Heather Danielle Heyer, and injuring 19 other people.
"I thought you could defeat hate. It only hides, it only hides, and when someone in authority breathes oxygen under that rock, it legitimizes those folks to come on out, come on out from under the rocks," he said.
