Trump campaign officials said Wednesday that Joseph R. Biden’s abrupt decision to visit riot-damaged Kenosha, Wisconsin, this week is proof that President Trump has succeeded in portraying the Democratic nominee as too weak to stand up to violent far-left demonstrators in his party.
“He knows he has been defined as a tool of the radical left who is too weak to stand up to the anti-police wing and the radicals in his party,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said of Mr. Biden. “You don’t need polls to understand that Americans can see, on the evening news and all day on cable television, cities on fire.”
Mr. Biden announced he will visit Kenosha Thursday, two days after the president traveled to the city to bring millions in federal aid for police and burned-out businesses. The destruction and protests followed the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, on Aug. 23.
“Look at how Joe Biden is behaving, if you want to understand how the issue of these left-wing riots is resonating with Americans,” Mr. Murtaugh told reporters. “It’s no accident that he has decided to devote $45 million worth of television advertising in one week trying to dissuade Americans from thinking that he is weak and afraid to stand up to the leftist mob.”
He noted that Mr. Biden declined to travel to Wisconsin just two weeks ago for the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, which was shifted to a virtual event due to coronavirus concerns.
Mr. Biden’s trip to Wisconsin will be the first by a Democratic nominee in a general election since 2012. Mr. Trump won the state narrowly over Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the Democrat is leading the president by 3.5 percentage points in the Real Clear Politics average of polls.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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