Biden Blames 'Former Military, Former Police Officers' for Spurring 'Growth' of White Supremacy
President Joe Biden said Tuesday that some of the men and women once charged with protecting America at home and abroad are responsible for the growth of white supremacy groups.
Biden made the claim while appearing in a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
During the session, he was asked by Joel Berkowitz, a professor of foreign languages and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, about “ongoing threats to our country from Americans who embrace white supremacy and conspiracies that align with it. What can your administration do to address this complex and wide-ranging problem?”
“It is complex, it’s wide-ranging and it’s real. You may — I got involved in politics to begin with because of civil rights and opposition to white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan,” said Biden, whose record on civil rights was denounced during his presidential campaign by Vice President Kamala Harris while she was competing for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“And the most dangerous people in America continue to exist. That is the greatest threat to terror in America: domestic terror.”
President Biden says White supremacists are the greatest domestic terror threat in the US: “It’s complex, it’s wide-ranging and it’s real.” #BidenTownHall https://t.co/P1CFPNzLBl pic.twitter.com/dygwnLuXe1
— CNN (@CNN) February 17, 2021
Biden repeated his promise to focus on white supremacists.
“And so I would make sure that my Justice Department and the Civil Rights Division is focused heavily on those very folks. And I would make sure that we, in fact, focus on how to deal with the rise of white supremacy,” he said.
Biden then pointed the finger at former service members and law enforcement officers.
“And you see what’s happening — and the studies that are beginning to be done, maybe at your university as well — about the impact of former military, former police officers, on the growth of white supremacy in some of these groups,” he said.
He then repeated his allegation that members of some far-right groups are “demented.”
“You may remember in one of my debates with the former president, I asked him to condemn the Proud Boys. He wouldn’t do it. He said, ‘Stand by. Stand ready.’ Or whatever the phrasing exactly was. It is a bane on our existence. It has always been. As Lincoln said, ‘We have to appeal to our better angels,'” Biden said.
“And these guys are not — and women — are, in fact, demented. They are dangerous people.”
Some pushed back against the president’s words.
.@JoeBiden talks about how former police and former military are boosting white supremacy (!).
Biden repeats the false claim that Trump wouldn’t condemn the Proud Boys. He did. https://t.co/DnwOvXz7B8
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) February 17, 2021
More unity from Joe Biden himself: former military, police are fuelling ‘growth of white supremacy’ groups. Such inspirational rhetoric from the demented President. https://t.co/Bo6bKPOyUL
— Catherine (@catherine___c) February 17, 2021
Trump loved the police and the military.
Now we got this guy, who blames them for our problems.https://t.co/lOIZ6sNACX via @BreitbartNews
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) February 17, 2021
Biden’s comment is somewhat in line with the thoughts of Dyjuan Tatro, hired by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its director of strategic outreach for the diversity and inclusion department.
In a since-deleted tweet last month, Tatro issued a scathing attack on the police.
“The answer to white supremacists storming the Capitol is not to give more money to a different group of white supremacists who’s [sic] job it is to uphold white supremacy,” he wrote then.
Another since-deleted tweet compared the police to Nazis.
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