Biden condemns violence at protests: 'Rioting is not protesting'

IGOR BOBIC

Aug 31st 2020 3:27PM

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden forcefully condemned violence and looting after another weekend of deadly clashes between protesters, supporters of President Donald Trump and police officers in several U.S. cities.

“Rioting is not protesting. Looking is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. ... Violence will not bring change. It will only bring destruction. It’s wrong in every way,” Biden said during a speech in Pittsburgh Monday.

“We must not burn. We have to build,” the former vice president added.

Biden also pushed back on the image Trump and Republicans have tried to paint of him as being soft on crime and of being beholden to the far-left elements of his party.

“Ask yourself: Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioting? Really?” Biden asked.

The monthslong protests against racial injustice and police brutality that began earlier this summer after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis were fueled again this month after Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer.

A man was shot and killed in downtown Portland, Oregon, Saturday night after a large group of Trump supporters and members of a violent far-right group drove a caravan of cars through the city. Videos posted online showed fights breaking out between Trump supporters and the protesters. Trump tweeted “Rest In Peace” about the man killed Saturday.

Last week, prosecutors charged a 17-year-old for shooting three people, killing two, during protests against police brutality in Kenosha after joining up with a group of vigilantes seeking to “protect” public property.

 

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Minneapolis was hit by a second wave of looting last week, and businesses reported storefronts burned in Portland and Kenosha over the weekend. 

Trump’s campaign has sought to turn to images of violent protests in U.S. cities in an attempt to fire up his supporters — and, more important, make suburban voters who may not personally like the president hold their nose and vote for him anyway.

Biden rejected that characterization on Monday by once again accusing Trump of stoking flames of racial discord in order to bolster his reelection chances in November.

“This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can’t stop the violence — because for years he has fomented it,” Biden said in his speech. “He may believe mouthing the words ‘law and order’ makes him strong, but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows you how weak he is.”

“Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?” Biden added.

Biden tried to turn the tables on Trump by calling him out for remaining silent on the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen charged for killing two protesters in Kenosha. Trump’s “failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia shows how weak he is,” Biden said.

Asked Monday during a press briefing whether Trump condemns the actions of Rittenhouse, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “The president is not going to weigh in on that.”

Reporter asks if President Trump condemns the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen charged for killing two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

McEnany: "The president is not going to weigh in on that" https://t.co/Nj065CIsxppic.twitter.com/TcPrKXS1oo

— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 31, 2020

• This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

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FBI to help Portland police investigate fatal shooting at pro-Trump caravan

CARLA HERRERIA RUSSO

Aug 31st 2020 12:59PM

Two federal agencies are stepping in to help local police investigate a fatal shooting that took place after a large group of right-wing supporters of President Donald Trump and members of a violent far-right group drove a caravan of cars through Portland, Oregon.

A spokesperson for Attorney General William Barr said Sunday that agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were currently in Portland “actively offering support and resources” to police.

The shooting took place on Saturday night after the caravan, which was led by the right-wing political group Patriot Prayer, drove through Portland and was met with counterprotesters, according to The Associated Press. The Oregonian estimated that there were nearly 1,000 cars in the caravan.

At times during the demonstration, members of the caravan used paintball guns to shoot at counterprotesters, who threw objects at the cars, according to reports. Event organizers reportedly urged attendees to bring firearms with them but not display them openly.

Portland police said the victim was found with a gunshot wound to the chest in the city’s downtown. While officials haven’t released the name of the victim, Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson described him as a “friend and supporter” of the far-right group, The Oregonian reported. 

Portland police said in a statement Sunday that they were still in the initial stages of the investigation and urged the public not to make any conclusions about the shooting. They called for witnesses to come forward and for people to turn in video of the shooting.

“It is still early in this investigation, and I ask everyone to give the detectives time to do their important work before drawing conclusions about what took place,” police chief Chuck Lovell said in the statement. “If anyone can provide information about this case, I ask them to please reach out to our detectives. This violence is completely unacceptable and we are working diligently to find and apprehend the individual or individuals responsible.”

Patriot Prayer has traveled to Portland multiple times in the last three years to hold pro-Trump demonstrations that have led to violent clashes with anti-fascist activists. 

Trump paid tribute to the victim, who was identified in a tweet on Sunday.

Trump did not offer such a tribute on Twitter for the two people who were fatally shot less than a week earlier by a teenage supporter of the president in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Those victims were protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man left paralyzed by seven gunshots.

In a televised statement on Sunday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, accused Trump of creating “hate and division” in America, which he said fueled the violence in his city.

“You’ve tried to divide us more than any other figure in modern history. And now you want me to stop the violence that you helped create,” Wheeler said.

Trump responded in a tweet, threatening to send more federal law enforcement to Oregon.

There have also been anti-racism protests and related civil unrest in Portland, as part of the wave of demonstrations that have taken place across the country since the death of George Floyd, who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck during an arrest in May 

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Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie slams United States leadership over COVID-19 response

Yahoo Sports

RYAN YOUNG

Aug 31st 2020 9:15AM

The NFL season is set to kick off next month as the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging throughout the United States.

The fact that the country hasn’t been able to get it under control by now, Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said on Sunday, is “a tragic embarrassment.”

Jeffrey Lurie slams leadership over COVID-19 response

Though he didn’t call the president out by name, Lurie took aim at his and the rest of the country’s leadership during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We have to own the questions of leadership and the questions about policies,” Lurie said Sunday, via NJ.com. “There is a lot to be discussed here on that and in the future. It is heartbreaking. These are needless deaths. We should be similar to most countries on this planet, and yet, we are an embarrassment, a tragic embarrassment.”

There were more than six million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States as of Sunday night, according to The New York Times, and nearly 183,000 deaths attributed to it. The United States is one of just three countries in the world with more than one million total cases — along Brazil and India, though both countries had less than four million each — and had the second-most reported cases in the world over the past week.

[ Coronavirus: How the sports world is responding to the pandemic ]

Those numbers, Lurie said, don’t make sense to him.

“What if I told you yesterday that five Boeing 737′s crashed in the United States and everybody died?” Lurie asked, via NJ.com. “That is every single day right now. It has been that way for many weeks. We are 4 percent of the world’s population, 21 percent of the fatalities. There is a lot to figure out. Why is that the case? 

“The fact of the matter is it’s feeling the pain of all those people in the United States and wondering why we are the wealthiest country in the world but have 21 percent of the deaths. We have the ability to socially distance better than any country and life-saving mechanisms more than any third-world country.”

‘We are going through two terrible pandemics’

Lurie didn’t stop with the coronavirus. 

He addressed the massive social justice movement taking place in the country, too — specifically the death of George Floyd earlier this year. 

Floyd, a Black man, died in Minneapolis police custody in May after a white officer placed his knee in the back of Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes while he yelled out, “I can’t breathe.”

Video of that incident quickly went viral, sparking a massive social justice push that included countless athletes. 

“If you open your heart, you’re not going to put your knee on someone’s neck and let them expire,” Lurie said, via NJ.com. “That’s from someone whose heart is closed and hates themselves. We have to weed out those who are so disassociated from themselves that they hate themselves. That’s really hard to do.”

Both that and the pandemic happening at the same time, Lurie said, have made for an extremely tough year. The only way to change, he said, is owning our mistakes and “opening our hearts.”

“There is just so much pain both in our country and around the world,” Lurie said, via NJ.com. “We are going through two terrible pandemics, one that has existed for the entirety of our country in the pandemic of systemic racism, violence to minorities and oppression, and all of those activities that have been part of our history. The other is the once in a 100-year health pandemic that has been devastating.”

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Ecuadorian spouses break record as the world's oldest married couple

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Aug 31st 2020 8:25AM

QUITO, Ecuador — Julio Mora slipped away from his parents to secretly marry Waldramina Quinteros one February day. Both families disapproved.

Seventy-nine years later, they’re still together — he at 110 years of age, and she at 104, both lucid and both in good health, though relatives say they’re a little depressed because they miss their big family get-togethers due to the pandemic.

There are longer marriages, but at the moment no other between people so old, according to Guinness World Records — just short of a combined 215 years.

Mora was born on March 10, 1910, and Quinteros on October 16, 1915. They wed on February 7, 1941, in the first church built by the Spanish in Quito: La Iglesia de El Belen.

The two retired teachers live in Ecuador’s capital of Quito, where in mid-August they received the Guinness certification.

Their daughter Cecilia says they’re both lucid and active, although they no longer have the agility they had before. But “for a month they have been different, more downcast because they miss large family gatherings.”

And they can gather quite a crowd: four surviving children, 11 grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

“Since March, we have not had any of that,” Cecilia said. “My parents need family contact ”.

She said her father enjoys watching television and drinking milk and that her mother, who enjoys desserts, likes to read the newspaper every morning.

Previously listed as the oldest were an Austin, Texas, couple, Charlotte Henderson and John Henderson who have a combined age of 212 years and 52 days.

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