Face of Nation : Democratic presidential front-runner and former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden accused President Donald Trump of fuelling the white supremacy that’s blamed for several mass shootings in the United States, according to a speech Biden was due to deliver on Wednesday.
Biden, 76, was scheduled to speak in Iowa after back-to-back mass shootings this past weekend in the United States. In the first, on Saturday, a gunman killed 22 people in El Paso, a Texas city on the border with Mexico. Law enforcement agencies say he apparently was driven by hatred for Hispanics. In the second mass shooting, a gunman in Dayton, Ohio, killed nine people, including his sister, before he was killed by police.
Trump’s rhetoric, including calling Central Americans trying to enter the United States “an invasion”, and his hard-line immigration policies have exposed him to condemnation since the El Paso shooting.
Trump aides deny his rhetoric was a cause of the shootings. In a national address, the president proposed reforming mental health laws, working with social media to detect possible mass shooters and keeping guns away from people considered potentially violent. He plans to visit El Paso on Wednesday. Biden is one of 24 candidates trying to become the nominee to take on Trump in next November’s election. Iowa is among the first states to vote in the Democratic nomination process.
