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- US President Donald Trump was quick to quell the uproar over his inability to explicitly denounce white supremacist groups during his debate.
- The bitter adversaries returned to the campaign a day after their off-the-rails showdown in Cleveland made headlines.
- Joe Biden fiercely attacked Trump’s failure to clearly denounce white supremacist groups or the far-right Proud Boys.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday was quick to quell an uproar over his inability to explicitly denounce white supremacist groups during his debacle of debate with Joe Biden, calling his electoral rival a “national embarrassment.”
Bitter adversaries returned to the campaign a day after their off-the-rails showdown in Cleveland made headlines less for its substance than for its unbridled chaos.
The toxic screaming festival, with Trump constantly disrupting and Biden launching personal attacks, even prompted the Presidential Debate Oversight Commission to announce that it would impose new measures to help moderators “keep order” in the next two debates.
After his assertive performance, Biden launched a stop-alert train tour Wednesday through the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania where he attacked Trump.
“The president of the United States behaved the way he did; I think it was a national disgrace,” Biden said in Alliance, Ohio.
He fiercely attacked the fact that Trump did not clearly denounce the white supremacist groups or the far-right Proud Boys, instead giving the all-male militia group a salute saying they should “back off and stay out of it” real problem is “extreme left” extremists.
“My message to the Proud Boys and all other white supremacist groups is: cease and desist,” Biden said. “This is not who we are as Americans.”
Trump, in an apparent attempt to suppress outrage over his comments, asked the group to “stand down.”
“I don’t know who the Proud Boys are, but whoever they are, they have to stand down,” Trump told reporters. “Stand back, let the police do their job.”
Trump’s pushback came after several Republicans distanced themselves from the president’s debate comment, and Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the US Senate, said Trump “needs to correct” his comments.
Several other Republicans reportedly offered a similar reaction, including powerful Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Biden, who leads the election polls, criticized Trump for not speaking directly to the American public about his plight during the Covid-19 crisis, which has killed more than 206,000 Americans.
And during a train stop in Pittsburgh, he attacked the president for “planting seeds of doubt” about the integrity of the US elections, saying voting by mail will be plagued by “fraud the likes of which has never been seen before.”
But Biden bit on the subject of white supremacy all day. At a stop in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, where hundreds of people gathered in what was one of Biden’s largest crowds since the pandemic, he noted how the Proud Boys were already treating Trump’s words as a boost to their cause.
“They have a new emblem now, it literally says ‘Stand back and stay alert,’ which means that if you lose the election, you may have to do something,” said Biden, 77.
“I promise you, that won’t happen,” he added. “No one will stand in the way of our democratic process in the future.”
Biden was also pushing his working-class roots, as he accepted the backing of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Carpenters of America, with 550,000 members.
“Donald Trump sees things from Park Avenue. I see them from where I grew up in Scranton,” Biden said.
Quick polls on the presidential candidates’ performances in the debate leaned toward Biden, who withstood a barrage of spikes from Trump, 74, while offering up some of his own.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump’s behavior in the debate demonstrated why he had recommended that Biden not debate him at all.
“You saw a political nervous breakdown, a crisis,” Pelosi said on MSNBC.
Trump “has never respected the dignity of his office and he showed that last night.”
The Cleveland debate was scheduled to be the first of three before the election, but the bitter debacle prompted some commentators to call for the other two to be canceled.
In an interview with CNN, Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, suggested the Democratic candidate was unlikely to withdraw from upcoming debates.
“Joe Biden will never refuse to speak to the American people,” Harris said.
The next debate is scheduled for October 15 in Miami.
Meanwhile, Trump flew to Duluth, Minnesota, a Midwestern state that Hillary Clinton narrowly won in 2016, for an outdoor rally with his faithful.
Ally Eid, 29, among several supporters waiting for the president under a drizzle early Wednesday in Duluth, said she was not offended by the outbursts of Trump’s impetuous debate.
“He speaks his mind and makes his points understood and that is why so many people support him,” Eid told AFP.
“Stand up for what everyone wants to say, but they won’t say it on national television.”
