Joe Biden jumped to the defense of rumored vice presidential pick Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, ripping President Trump for stoking the anger that led to a string of anti-lockdown protests in her state.
“People are walking into the state legislative body and in front of her driveway carrying assault rifles, Nazi banners, and Confederate flags, and the president is not saying a word,” Biden told donors on Tuesday.
The presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee added: “Instead of denouncing these growing conspiracy theories poisoning the public space, he’s a leading proponent of it. I find it reprehensible. … The conspiracy theories across the board are like poison to democracy.”
Some Michigan residents have grown weary of Whitmer’s strict stay-at-home orders, rolled out to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Protests have sprung up around the state, including a group of demonstrators wielding rifles and other long guns that descended on the state’s Capitol in Lansing earlier this month.
“These have been really political rallies where people come with Confederate flags and Nazi symbolism and calling for violence,” Whitmer told ABC’s The View last week. “This is not appropriate in a global pandemic, but it’s certainly not an exercise of democratic principles where we have free speech. This is calls to violence. This is racist and misogynistic.”
At the Tuesday fundraiser billed as a “virtual fireside chat” focused on the American-Jewish community with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, Biden acknowledged that, while “criticism of Israel’s policy is not anti-Semitism,” “too often that criticism from the Left morphs into anti-Semitism.”
Biden recommitted to helping Israel maintain a “qualitative military edge” but chastised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for moving “so, so far to the right.” He also said he supported the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority.
“We have to continue to fight for the right of both states to exist. It’s possible, we came close, and we have to try it again,” he said.
