LAS VEGAS, Nev.—On Tuesday morning, President Joe Biden addressed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention with a speech that rarely minced words regarding political violence, former president Donald Trump’s continued lies, the plight of the Black community, and the high stakes for the upcoming presidential election. The president emphasized that he is continuing to be “all in” when it comes to his campaign for a second term in November.
The president’s speech comes days after the assassination attempt against planned Republican presidential nominee Trump. Since then, the Biden administration has called for lowering the “temperature” regarding political rhetoric. While the president repeated those sentiments in his speech—condemning the assassination attempt— he went on to focus on the broader picture of political violence in the United States, the marginalized communities that are often the victims of it, and the right wing’s role in stoking the flames.
“You [the NAACP] know the pain and the price of violence,” the president noted. This was in reference to the very founding of the historic organization, which came out of the Springfield Race Riot of 1908. The events of that riot consisted of mass racial violence against African Americans by a mob of nearly 5,000 white Americans in Springfield, Illinois, between August 14 and 16 of that year.
Using more modern examples, Biden listed the violence and intimidation thrown at Black electoral workers, such as Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman. On the same day of the January 6 insurrection, Freeman was advised by the FBI to flee her home as a group of Trump supporters descended upon her address after she was falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 election from the former president and called a “professional vote scammer.”
Biden then went on to highlight the anti-Black 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by Dylann Roof and the 2022 Tops Friendly Market shooting in Buffalo, New York, that saw African Americans targeted and killed by those indoctrinated with white supremacist rhetoric.
As he listed the tragic mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School (2012), Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas (2022), and the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival (2017), the president declared, “If you’re going to be outspoken on one [act of violence] don’t be silent on others.”
A clear response
This declaration seemed a clear response to the recent outcry from Republican politicians regarding the shooting in Pennsylvania last week, which stands in stark contrast to the often dismissive nature the Republican party has shown to other shootings and political acts of violence in the past, especially given their continued pushback against gun control.
“More children in America die of gunshot wounds than any other reason,” Biden noted. Pointing out that the alleged Pennysylvania gunman who shoot Trump, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was using an AR-15 rifle that day, the president said, “Weapons of war need to be off the streets of America. It’s time to outlaw them. I did it once, and I will do it again.”
Biden noted that while his administration believed in lowering the political temperature, that did not mean it would keep him from telling the truth regarding Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump’s presidency was Hell for Black Americans,” the president declared. Biden asserted that Trump was lying when it came to Black unemployment numbers currently being high. Recent fact-checks have backed up Biden’s pushback, as statistics show that new record lows in the Biden presidency surpassed the record lows set during Trump’s presidency.
Listing off the Trump administration’s attack on Obamacare, Social Security, and Medicare, the president broadened the “Hell” of the Trump presidency not only to Black Americans but American workers as a whole.
Citing Trump’s two-trillion-dollar Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, President Biden declared that such a law only benefited the rich. Noting that the 1,000 billionaires in the United States only collectively pay 8.2% of federal taxes, Biden said to thunderous applause that “no billionaire should pay lower taxes than a teacher, a janitor, or a firefighter.”
As he spoke of the past, Biden focused on the present regarding the now infamous Project 2025, which advocates for far-right extreme attacks on many working people’s rights. This includes getting rid of the right to overtime pay and the continuing rollback of a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body. He called for people to read the document to understand the danger of a Trump presidency.
While President Biden zeroed in on the danger of another four years of Trump, he strategically laid out his administration’s specific goals for the first 100 days of his second term in office. These included making it so billionaires pay at least 25% of federal taxes, expanding Social Security and Medicare benefits, strengthening the Voting Rights Act, passing the Freedom to Vote Act, and continuing to improve national infrastructure.
Although the president quipped about knowing what a “Black job” is in reference to Trump’s racial dog whistle remarks on the roles Black people play in society, he grew serious when highlighting how the Biden administration has worked to put Black women in influential roles. Such as Vice President Kamala Harris and the first Black woman to serve in the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Biden pointed out that the next president could be in charge of nominating at least two Supreme Court Justices during their term. He also noted, once again, that Harris was more than capable of being the President of the United States herself one day.
These highlights could be interpreted as superfluous pandering, but given the statistical facts that Black women have often been at the forefront of helping to determine elections, it seemed fitting that the president recognized their influence and the pivotal role they will no doubt play leading up to the November elections.
Stating that “hopefully, with age, I’ve demonstrated a little wisdom,” President Biden called on the audience and all those watching to believe in the “possibilities” of America and to fight for the preservation of democracy come November.
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