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President Donald Trump’s refusal to explicitly condemn a key far-right group has sparked outrage among opponents after a fierce and chaotic election debate in the United States.
In the television debate with his rival Joe Biden, instead, he asked the Proud Boys group to “stand back and stay out of it.”
Members of the Proud Boys said on social media that the comments were “historic” and endorsement.
Biden said Trump had “refused to repudiate white supremacists.”
The first of three televised debates between the two men before the November 3 election turned into fights, brawls and insults, and was described by the US media as chaotic, ugly and horrible.
The committee that regulates the debates said it would introduce new measures in the next two to “maintain order.”
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Not much was learned about politics, and while a quick poll on the debate gave Biden a slight edge, other opinion polls suggest that 90% of Americans have already made a decision on who to vote for and the debate may has made little difference.
BBC North America reporter Anthony Zurcher says that if one man was the winner it was Joe Biden, as he was less covered in rubbish from the food fight. Anything resembling a substantial exchange was buried in disputes, so this was a missed opportunity for the president, he says.
Biden appears to have a single-digit lead over Trump, but polls in so-called battlefield states suggest this could still be close competition.
Why did the problem of the extreme right arise?
It was posed by debate moderator Chris Wallace amid the backdrop of street violence in some cities this year, some of which erupted over issues of police killings and racism.
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Wallace asked if the president would condemn white supremacists and tell them to stand down during the demonstrations.
“Sure, I’m willing to … but I’d say almost everything I see is from the left, not the right. I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace,” Trump said.
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Biden said “Proud Boys” twice when the president asked who he was told to condemn.
The president said, “Proud Boys, stand back and wait. But I’ll tell you one thing … Someone has to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.”
Founded in 2016, Proud Boys is an all-male, far-right, anti-immigrant group with a history of street violence against left-wing opponents. A Proud Boys social media account posts the “Stand Back, Stand By” logo.
Antifa, short for “antifascist,” is a loose affiliation of far-left activists who often clash with the far-right in protests.
What has been the reaction?
Joe Biden returned to the subject in a tweet on Wednesday, saying: “There is no other way to put it: the president of the United States refused last night to repudiate white supremacists on the stage of the debate.”
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Reuters
Members of the Proud Boys gather in Portland, Oregon this past weekend
In his tweet, he quoted a comment, addressed to the president, from a Proud Boys online forum that read: “This makes me so happy. We are ready! Waiting, sir.”
Biden’s Democratic running mate Kamala Harris told CNN: “I heard what we all hear. The President of the United States, in the year of our Lord 2020, refuses to condemn white supremacists.”
The Executive Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, said Trump’s words were “astonishing” and Rita Katz of the extremist watchdog SITE said Trump had given “another nod to white supremacists.”
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President Trump has tried to project a posture of being the president of law and order. His response in a tweet on Wednesday read: “Biden REFUSED to use the term LAW AND ORDER. There goes the suburbs.”
Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley told CNN that the president had said “sure” when asked if he would condemn extremist groups, adding that Trump had “many times not last night, also in the past. “.
Trump’s son Donald Jr. also said his father was “happy” to condemn those groups. “I don’t know if it was a mistake, but I was talking about them pulling out,” he told CBS.
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Republican politicians were quite silent in their response, some argued that Trump had condemned all street violence, others said the president may have misrepresented or should have provided more clarity.
Trump has downplayed the threat from white supremacist groups in the past, although the Department of Homeland Security says they will remain the “most persistent and deadly threat” in the United States until next year.
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The members of the Proud Boys certainly believed they had been supported by Trump.
Organizer Joe Biggs wrote: “President Trump told the proud boys to wait because someone needs to deal with antifa … well sir! We are ready !!”
One member said the group was already experiencing a surge in new recruits.
What were the other key moments in the debate?
In the 90-minute debate in Cleveland, Ohio, both candidates talked a lot to each other. Trump intervened 73 times.
The main problems included:
- Abundant insults. In upsetting Trump, Biden called the president a “clown.” He said to the president, “Do you want to shut up, man?” and then blurted out “Keep barking man”
- Trump said Biden “had graduated as the shortest or nearly the shortest in his class” and had done nothing in 47 years of politics.
- Biden said Trump had “panicked” over the coronavirus epidemic and that “a lot of people died.” Later, Trump tweeted that many more would have died if Biden had been president.
- Trump defended his effort to quickly fill a seat on the US Supreme Court, while Joe Biden declined to respond when asked if he would try to expand the number of justices.
- When asked if he would encourage his supporters to be peaceful if the election results were not clear, Trump said: “I am encouraging my supporters to go to the polls and watch very closely.”
- When Trump said that Biden would be urging the left of the Democratic Party on health and environmental policy, Biden responded, “I am the Democratic Party right now.”
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What happens now?
The war of words that followed the debate continued into Wednesday’s exchanges.
On Twitter, Trump said that Biden would destroy the country, claiming the challenger wishes to fill the Supreme Court with justices, end fracking and end the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which includes the right to bear arms.
He said he was going to Minnesota on Wednesday.
Joe Biden is on an all-day train ride through eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, while his campaign has also launched a digital ad attack on the president.
He said on the first stop of his tour that Trump “had forgotten about the forgotten Americans he said he was going to fight for. I will never forget them.”
Mr. Biden added, “I’m not going to be a Democratic president. I’m going to be an American president.”
The other television debates between the two candidates are on October 15 in Florida and October 22 in Tennessee.
