Two days after President Donald Trump toured Kenosha in the wake of civil unrest, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden landed in Wisconsin on Thursday to speak with Jacob Blake by phone and meet with his family in person.
Biden said he spoke on the phone for 15 minutes with Jacob Blake, who the former vice president said has been taken out of an intensive care unit.
“He talked about how nothing is going to defeat him,” Biden said. “What I came away with was the overwhelming sense of resilience and optimism that they have about the kind of response they’re getting here.”
“His mom said a prayer,” according to Biden. “She said, ‘I’m praying for Jacob and I’m praying for the policeman as well. I’m praying things change.’
“If you think a little about where we are right now, it’s been a terrible, terrible wakeup call that’s gotten the nation to realize the confluence of three things,” Biden said, referring to the coronavirus pandemic, racism and economic inequity.
Shortly after touching down at Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport about 11:40 a.m., the former vice president and his wife Jill Biden met privately with the father and three siblings of Blake, the Black man whose shooting at the hand of a white Kenosha police officer just over a week ago has spurred the nation’s latest reckoning with racism and police violence.
Their meeting lasted about an hour, before Biden headed to the beleaguered southeastern Wisconsin city for a community meeting “to bring together Americans to heal and address the challenges we face,” according to his campaign.
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That meeting is taking place at a Lutheran church west of the downtown Kenosha city square that saw days — and violent nights — of protests following the Aug. 23 shooting of Blake.
“The words of a president matter, no matter they’re good, bad, indifferent. They matter,” Biden told those who gathered to tell him about the problems in Kenosha — and America as a whole.
The former vice president told them he is an optimist.
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“This is not who we are,” he said.
Talking to reporters in Delaware on Wednesday, “I’m not going to tell Kenosha what they have to do, but what we have to do together. ... I spent my whole life, including in this city you’re in right now, bringing people together. Bringing the community and police officers together. Bringing business leaders and civic leaders together. And so that’s my purpose in going.”
During his visit Tuesday, Trump decried how “Kenosha has been ravaged by anti-police and anti-American riots.”
The Republican president said he had planned to speak by phone with Blake’s mother, “but then I heard there were a lot of lawyers on the phone. I said, ‘I have enough lawyers in my life. I don’t need to get involved with that,’ “ according to Trump.
Meanwhile, Jacob Blake’s uncle, Justin Blake, warned the president to “keep your disrespect and foul language away from our family.”
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Kenosha was quiet Thursday morning as police set up no-parking signs and a few people gathered across the street from Grace Lutheran Church, on the corner of 60th Street and 20th Avenue, awaiting Biden’s arrival. Those who showed up from the community were outnumbered by media.
Chloe Lenz, 17, said both visits to her hometown are a good thing even if it may be driven by politics.
“It shows people we’re not alone and helps people know what’s happening and how sad it is,” Lenz said.
Biden’s trip marks just his second time outside a carefully controlled COVID-19 bubble over the last few months of a pandemic-ridden campaign.
