Biden hits campaign trail, comes out swinging at Trump in battleground Pennsylvania

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Monday gave his first in-person campaign address since his presidential nomination at the DNC almost two weeks ago, blaming President Trump for a litany of pressing problems including the rioting in cities across the country as part of the social justice demonstrations.

"We are facing multiple crises — crises that, under Donald Trump, keep multiplying," Biden said at the event in Pittsburgh. "The incumbent president is incapable of telling us the truth, incapable of facing the facts, and incapable of healing. He doesn't want to shed light, he wants to generate hate, and he's stoking violence in our cities.

"COVID. Economic devastation. Unwarranted police violence. Emboldened white nationalists. A reckoning on race. Declining faith in a bright American future. The common thread? An incumbent president who makes things worse, not better.”

Biden has over the past few days condemned the riots, amid criticism that he's been slow to respond to the problem, which started in late May when George Floyd, a black male, died while in the custody of Minneapolis police. 

"I want to make it absolutely clear, rioting is not protesting," said Biden, about a week after protests turned destructive and deadly after police in Kenosha, Wisc., shot a black male suspect, Jacob Blake, multiple times during an attempted arrest. "Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting.  It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted."  

The 77-year-old Biden, who has been largely confined to campaigning from inside his Delaware homes because of the coronavirus, has recently said he will now campaign more in person.  

Trump has cast much of the blame for the violent protests on the leaders of the Democratic states and cities in which many of them have occurred.

"The Radical Left Mayors & Governors of Cities where this crazy violence is taking place have lost control of their 'Movement,'" Trump tweeted before the Biden event. "It wasn't supposed to be like this, but the Anarchists & Agitators got carried away and don't listen anymore — even forced Slow Joe out of basement!"