Biden meets with Jacob Blake's family in Milwaukee, then with community members in Kenosha
KENOSHA, Wis. - Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made a rare campaign trip to Wisconsin on Thursday during which he spoke by phone with paralyzed police shooting victim Jacob Blake, and met in person with his family members before heading to riot-torn Kenosha to say the country should seize the moment to rectify its institutional racism.
"I think we've reached an inflection point in American history. I honest to God believe we have an enormous opportunity - that the screen, the curtain's been pulled back on just what's going on in the country, to do a lot of really positive things," Biden told a group of community residents at the Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha, just a few blocks where several businesses burned during the violent unrest following Blake's shooting.
The former vice president, speaking through a mask, lashed out at President Donald Trump's rhetoric for fueling racial division.
"I thought you could defeat hate. Hate only hides. It only hides," he said. "And when someone in authority breathes oxygen under that rock, it legitimizes those folks to come on out, come out from under the rocks."
Biden's visit, occurring two days after Trump went to Kenosha to deliver his law-and-order reelection theme, was a test of the Democrat's campaign aims of trying to project himself as an empathetic leader in contrast to the brash Republican incumbent.
Before speaking in Kenosha, Biden met privately for an hour with the family of Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black man who was paralyzed after being shot in the back by a Kenosha police officer last month. The visit - with Blake's father,
