Biden to Stress Election Stakes at Massacre Church

Joe Biden will visit Monday a church where a white supremacist shot dead nine Black parishioners in 2015 as the US president ramps up his message that democracy is at stake in a likely election clash with Donald Trump.

The 81-year-old Democrat is trying to boost his 2024 reelection campaign with his second major event of the year, with a speech at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

It comes just days after he launched a fierce condemnation of Trump in an address in Pennsylvania during which compared the Republicans to the Nazis and accused him of fueling the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Biden will “deliver remarks underscoring the enormous stakes of this election, as Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans wage a campaign determined to undermine American democracy,” his campaign said in a statement.

Trump and his allies were trying to “strip away our freedom, and threaten the type of political violence that concerns 83 per cent of Americans and plagued Mother Emanuel Church nearly nine years ago,” it added.

Nine Black churchgoers attending a Bible study group were killed in the June 17, 2015 attack on the church, one of the oldest African American churches in the southern United States.

Self-proclaimed white supremacist Dylann Roof, who was 21 at the time, said he carried out the shooting to start a race war. He was sentenced to death in 2017.

‘Extremism’

“We’re all proud to welcome President Biden to the church to remind the nation of what happened and that it is on all of us to fight back against this extremism,” Biden campaign co-chair and congressman Jim Clyburn said.

He said the church had “witnessed the horrors of hate-fueled political violence” and “shown us the path forward after moments of division and despair.”

Biden is trailing or neck-and-neck with former president Trump in a series of recent polls, while his approval ratings are the lowest for any modern president at this stage in their term of office.

The Democrat has set his sights on the tycoon as the election year begins, portraying himself as a unifier and defender of democracy, and his opponent as a threat to American institutions.

Biden has changed his focus from talking about the economy, with many US voters apparently unconvinced by favourable jobs and growth numbers while prices for food and housing remain eye-wateringly high.

Polls have also shown Biden’s support slipping among Black and ethnic minority voters, who helped drive his 2020 election win against Trump.

Clyburn told CNN on Sunday that he was “very concerned” about Black voters showing up for Biden.

Kamala Harris, the first Black, South Asian and female vice president in US history, also visited South Carolina on Saturday where she urged mainly Black church female church leaders to “roll up our sleeves” in the election battle.

Signs of further Democrat concerns emerged at the weekend with US media reports that former President Barack Obama had raised questions with Biden about the structure of the campaign.