President Biden on Tuesday called white supremacy “a poison” in America and called on Americans to reject the racist white “replacement theory” believed to have inspired the gunman in the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. “I call on all Americans to reject the lie,” Biden said from Buffalo on Tuesday afternoon. “I condemn those who spread lies for power, for political gain and for profit. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that white supremacist ideology has no place in America,” Biden said.
Biden spoke those words after meeting with the families of the victims of Saturday’s mass shooting, which police are investigating as a racially motivated hate crime. Biden called the shooting, which left 10 people dead, an act of “domestic terrorism.” “What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism,” Biden said. “Violence inflicted in the service of hatred and vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people as inherently inferior to any other group.”
The president widely criticized the media, politics and the Internet for spreading the “replacement theory,” according to which whites are at risk of being replaced by minority groups. But he wasn’t referring to any particular individual, even as Fox News primetime anchors and certain Republican lawmakers have come under scrutiny in recent days for their rhetoric about immigrants and their reluctance to denounce notions of white supremacy. .
Other Democrats, such as Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (DN.Y.), have taken a different approach. Schumer wrote to Fox News executives asking them to stop the “reckless amplification of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ Theory.”
Biden condemned the shooting over the weekend, but Tuesday’s speech was his longest statement to date on the tragedy. Ten people were killed and three wounded when an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a Tops Friendly Market in a predominantly black neighborhood last Saturday afternoon. The development has prompted renewed calls for federal gun control legislation and calls for the government to do more to end the threat of white supremacy.
Biden only briefly called for new action on gun control, renewing his call to ban assault weapons and urging action to “address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize terrorism.”
The prospect of passing gun control legislation is unlikely. Republicans have long opposed more federal gun restrictions, and Democrats need at least 10 Republicans to vote with them in the Senate to overcome legislative filibuster.
Biden later acknowledged the difficulty of getting gun legislation through Congress, telling reporters before leaving Buffalo: “It’s going to be very difficult, but I’m not giving up.”
The president’s speech was largely a condemnation of white supremacy, which Biden denounced as “a poison running through our body politic.”
The president sought a unifying tone, expressing optimism that Americans can rise up against “hate” and “evil.” “We have to refuse to live in a country where black people who go grocery shopping weekly can be shot to death with weapons of war deployed in a racist cause,” Biden said. “We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and profit. We should all enlist in this great American cause.”
