President Joe Biden’s campaign continued to link Donald Trump to political violence on Monday ahead of the former president’s visit to the key battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan.
At a news conference in Washington, DC, Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said a video posted by Trump on Friday that featured an image of Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck, was “not the first time and sadly will not be the last time that Donald Trump chooses to traffic in violence as he seeks to regain power.”
Tyler said the former president is “perfectly comfortable with violence when he thinks it benefits him,” before later listing off examples of Trump’s proximity to violence, including encouraging supporters to beat up protesters in 2016, saying there were “fine people” on “both sides” when White supremacists descended on Charlottesville and stoking riots on January 6.
The campaign also invited former US Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who were both at the center of violence on January 6, to appear in their personal capacities to speak out about the violence stoked by Trump on that day.
“For Trump, violence is a weapon to get what he wants – power, revenge, retribution. I have seen what happened if someone like him has power, and I barely survived it,” Gonell said.
Hodges accused Trump of only caring about victims of violence, like slain New York Police Department Officer Jonathan Diller, “when he thinks it benefits him.”
Trump attended Diller’s wake in New York last week after the officer was gunned down in the line of duty. Hodges said Diller’s “bravery should be celebrated and should not be a photo opp for Donald Trump.”
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