WASHINGTON — President Biden will travel to Buffalo on Tuesday to denounce the racist massacre in a predominately Black neighborhood as “terrorism motivated by a hateful and perverse ideology,” according to a White House official, who said Mr. Biden would also call for stricter gun control measures.The president will be confronting the violent white extremism displayed when neo-Nazis and right-wing militias marched into Charlottesville, Va., a moment Mr. Biden has often said drove him to run for president to undertake a “battle for the soul of America.”But the challenge for a president who came to office preaching unity may be how to take on those preaching hate. While aides made clear that Mr. Biden would denounce the white supremacy and hate speech that appeared to animate the man who opened fire on mostly Black grocery store shoppers last weekend, killing 10 people, it remained unclear how directly the president would link such violence to the political statements of his opponents.Republican leaders like Representative Elise Stefanik of New York and Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson have employed the kind of provocative language that encourages racial resentment and served to inject fringe ideas like replacement theory — the idea that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to replace and disempower white Americans — into the mainstream on the political right.Mr. Biden, while denouncing domestic extremism, has mostly shied away from a sustained effort to tie it to leading conservatives despite pressure from some on the progressive left to offer a more full-throated condemnation.Whenever Mr. Biden does speak out more assertively about divisive politics, such as on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, he finds himself accused of violating his own promise to bring harmony to the country, leaving him in something of a political box, trapped by his desire to be a unifier while feeling compelled to take on the forces rending the country apart.“If he strays anywhere beyond thoughts and prayers, predictably people will scream that he’s politicizing this,” said Michael Waldman, who was a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. “But it was a political crime, ugly political violence. It would be wrong to act otherwise.”Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Biden would call out domestic terrorism during his visit to Buffalo, even if the trip will be focused on comforting “the families of the 10 people whose lives were so senselessly taken in this horrific shooting.”But Ms. Jean-Pierre stopped short of identifying by name Mr. Carlson or other members of Congress who have espoused the fringe views.“Watching what happened in Charlottesville was a major factor in the president deciding to run,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said on Monday. “Many of those dark voices still exist today, and the president is determined as he was back then and he is determined today to make sure that we fight back against those forces of hate and evil and violence.”Mr. Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, will also visit the Tops market memorial to pay respects to victims of the mass shooting, the official said. They will then meet with law enforcement officials and relatives of the victims before the president delivers a speech that will call out the “racist violence” on Saturday.The bloodshed is certain to renew the national debate over gun control, which is a prime example of Washington’s paralyzed politics.As a senator, Mr. Biden helped pass a 10-year assault weapons ban in the 1990s and as vice president he was tasked with developing a reform package after the massacre of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.Live Updates: Buffalo Shooting
Updated May 16, 2022, 9:07 p.m. ETRepublicans play on fears of ‘great replacement’ in bid for base voters.‘Uncle Teeny,’ who worked at Tops, was known as a ‘helping heart.’What do most mass shooters have in common? They bought their guns legally.The Obama administration issued nearly two dozen modest executive actions but failed to pass legislation. The Biden administration has also struggled to pass gun control legislation. Last year, Mr. Biden called gun violence in the United States “an international embarrassment” and took some steps to address the problem, starting with a crackdown on the proliferation of so-called ghost guns, or firearms assembled from kits.But the gun lobby’s hold on the Republican Party is unshaken and action on key gun issues, such as universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons, remains stalled in part because of the narrow partisan divide in the Senate.A White House spokesman said on Monday that the issue remained a top priority for Mr. Biden.Mr.By: Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker
Title: Biden Heads to Buffalo to Mourn Shooting Victims and Denounce Those Espousing Hate
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/us/politics/biden-buffalo-ny-visit.html
Published Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 09:00:15 +0000
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