Former Vice President Joe Biden called on Americans to stand up to what he called President Donald Trump’s betrayal of American values and the Constitution.
In an article in the Atlantic on Sunday, Biden said Trump had “publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and Klansmen and those who would oppose their venom and hate.”
The former vice president was referring to Trump’s remark on Aug. 15, three days after white nationalists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the protest.
“We have an American President who has emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support,” Biden added.
Counter-protester Heather Heyer died when a man who had been photographed with white nationalists earlier in the day allegedly rammed his car into a crowd. And police on Saturday announced three additional charges related to incidents during the rally. Two men were charged with malicious wounding in connection with the parking lot beating of a young black man, and another man was charged with discharging a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school.
Biden also condemned Trump’s pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt of court for defying a judge’s order to stop racially profiling people he and his deputies believed were undocumented immigrants. Arpaio’s list of abuses of jailed inmates runs long — for years, he ran an outdoor detention facility in Arizona’s sweltering heat that he once called a “concentration camp.”
“His contempt for the U.S. Constitution and willingness to divide this nation knows no bounds,” Biden wrote of Trump’s first presidential act of clemency.
Biden called on Americans to “do what our President has not. We have to uphold America’s values.”
“We have to do what he will not,” Biden continued. “We have to defend our Constitution. We have to remember our kids are watching. We have to show the world America is still a beacon of light.”
