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Biden Tries to Rally Disaffected Black

Voters in Fiery Condemnation of
Trump
The president visited Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal
Church in Charleston, S.C., the site of one of the most horrific
hate crimes in recent years, to denounce racism and extremism.

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President Biden’s visit to Charleston, S.C., was the second part of his two-stage
opening campaign swing of the election year. Pete Marovich for The New York Times

By Peter Baker
Traveling with President Biden in Charleston, S.C.

Jan. 8, 2024 Updated 5:29 p.m. ET

President Biden sought to rally disaffected Black supporters on

Monday with a fiery condemnation of former President Donald J.
Trump, linking his predecessor’s efforts to overturn the 2020
election to the nation’s history of white supremacy in what he
called “the old ghost in new garments.”

Speaking from the pulpit of the South’s oldest African Methodist

Episcopal Church , Mr. Biden drew a direct line from slavery, the
Civil War and Jim Crow to the divisions of today. Just as it was a
“self-serving lie” to call the Confederate rebellion a “noble cause,”
the president called Mr. Trump’s insistence that he won the election
an effort to rewrite history.

“Once again, there are some in this country trying to turn a loss
into a lie — a lie which, if allowed to live, will once again bring
terrible damage to this country,” Mr. Biden told about 700
parishioners and other guests at the Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. “This time, the lie is about the
2020 election.”

The president also took a shot at Nikki Haley, the former South
Carolina governor and onetime ambassador to the United Nations
who is seeking to deny Mr. Trump the Republican nomination this
year. Without naming her, Mr. Biden mocked Ms. Haley for refusing
at a recent campaign event to name slavery when asked what
started the Civil War.

“Let me be clear, for those who don’t seem to know: Slavery was
the cause of the Civil War,” Mr. Biden said to applause from the
audience.

The visit to South Carolina, the state that helped make Mr. Biden
the Democratic nominee nearly four years ago, was the second
part of the president’s two-stage opening campaign swing of the
election year. On Friday, he gave a speech near Valley Forge, Pa. ,
denouncing Mr. Trump on the eve of the third anniversary of the
Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. In coming to the storied Black church
where a white supremacist killed the pastor and eight parishioners
in 2015, Mr. Biden hoped to remind a key voting bloc of the
significance of the election in November.

After the massacre, Mr. Biden, then the vice president, joined
President Barack Obama in Charleston at the funeral of the pastor,
the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state senator, where Mr. Obama
delivered a eulogy and unexpectedly sang “Amazing Grace.” Mr.
Biden, then mourning his son Beau, who had died of cancer weeks
earlier, returned a couple of days later to pray with the
congregation at the church, commonly called Mother Emanuel.

Mr. Biden has often attributed his decision to run for president in
2020 to Mr. Trump’s racial provocations, particularly when Mr.
Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a deadly
white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. But Mr.
Biden has lost support among Black supporters who could be
critical to his hopes for beating Mr. Trump in a rematch this year.

Twenty-two percent of Black voters in six battleground states told

pollsters from The New York Times and Siena College last fall that
they would vote for Mr. Trump, while the president was drawing 71
percent. Such support indicates a surge for Mr. Trump, who won 6
percent of Black voters nationally in 2016 and 8 percent in 2020.

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in

the upper chamber, accused Mr. Biden on Monday of resorting to
scare tactics. “President Biden’s visit to Charleston to stoke fears
as his numbers are dropping amongst all minority groups is
remarkable,” said Mr. Scott, who dropped out of the Republican
presidential contest when his own campaign failed to gain traction.
“But it’s also indicative of the fact that people of color, Americans
all across this nation, are losing confidence in this president.”

Black Democrats in South Carolina helped save Mr. Biden’s

flagging campaign for the party’s nomination in 2020 after weak
showings in Iowa and New Hampshire. The president has since
orchestrated South Carolina’s ascendance as the first primary state
for 2024. To shore up support , Democrats have flooded the state in
recent weeks with money, staff and surrogates, and a campaign
aide said Mr. Biden would return again before the primary on Feb.
3.

The president was accompanied on Monday by Representative

James E. Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat whose critical
endorsement in 2020 helped propel Mr. Biden to the nomination.
Mr. Clyburn has met with Mr. Biden recently to share his worries
about the campaign and said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on
Sunday that he was “ very concerned ” about Black turnout in
November. Mr. Biden, he added, has not “been able to break
through that MAGA wall” to highlight his record with Black voters.
Mr. Obama has also expressed concern directly to Mr. Biden about
the state of the campaign, according to The Washington Post .

In introducing the president on Monday, Mr. Clyburn once again

put his weight behind Mr. Biden by promoting his efforts to reduce
student loan debt, expand veterans care, build infrastructure and
reduce the cost of insulin and other medicines. He called attention
to the president’s record of appointing more Black women to the
federal bench than all of his predecessors combined, including
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson .

“As I told you four years ago, we know Joe,” Mr. Clyburn told
parishioners on Monday, with the president sitting behind him.
“But more importantly, Joe knows us.”

Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager, said after

Mr. Biden’s speech that the president would be able to generate
renewed support among Black supporters by explaining his record.

“No president has done more for the Black community than what
Joe Biden has done,” Mr. Fulks said. He added, “The enthusiastic
problem is just going to be one where we continue to communicate
to these voters.”

In his speech, Mr. Biden recalled the dark days nearly nine years
ago when gunfire erupted just feet away from where he was
standing on Monday, a slaughter born, he said, of poison.

“What is that poison?” he asked. “White supremacy. Throughout

our history, it’s ripped this nation apart. This has no place in
America — not today, tomorrow or ever.”

He added that hope sprang from tragedy, noting that the shooting
in 2015 led South Carolina to lower the Confederate battle flag that
had flown on the grounds of the State House, though he did not
mention that it was Ms. Haley as governor who led the drive for a
law to do so.

Mr. Biden castigated Mr. Trump for, in his view, brushing off gun
violence, noting that the former president responded to a school
shooting in Iowa that killed an 11-year-old last week by saying that
“we have to get over it.” Mr. Biden said, “My response is we have to
stop it.” (Mr. Trump also called the shooting “ a very terrible thing ”
and told the relatives, “We are with you all the way.”)

A handful of protesters briefly interrupted the president’s

appearance on Monday by shouting “cease-fire now,” calling for an
end to Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in retaliation for
the terrorist attack on Oct. 7. As the protesters were led out of the
church, the audience shouted them down with chants of “four more
years.” Mr. Biden made a point of saying, “I understand their
passion,” adding that he had been working to reduce civilian
casualties.

After his stop in Charleston, Mr. Biden departed for Dallas for a
wake for former Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a
pioneering Black member of Congress for three decades, who died
at 89 last week .

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the
last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and
their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter
Baker
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 9, 2024 , Section A , Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline:
In South Carolina, Biden Courts Black Voters . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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The Run-Up to the 2024 Election

Donald Trump
​​Theevangelical Christians who are supporting the former president are not just
the churchgoing, conservative activists who once dominated the Republican
Party.
​​Trump sees gathering formal endorsements from elected Republicans as key to
his strategy of portraying himself as the inevitable victor. He is using fear and
favors to win that support .

President Biden
The president plans to reach out to disaffected Black supporters by taking his
campaign to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., the
site of one of the most horrific hate crimes of recent years.
Biden delivered a ferocious condemnation of Trump in a blistering speech ,

warning that the former president had directed an insurrection and would aim to
undo the nation’s bedrock democracy if he returned to power.

Other Candidates
Ron DeSantis: The Republican governor of Florida lobbed his most powerful
attacks yet against Trump during a nationally broadcast town hall, accusing the
former president, among other things, of not being “pro-life.”
Vivek Ramaswamy: The Republican tech entrepreneur running a long-shot
campaign doubled down on his pledge to tighten voting laws if he were to be
elected , reiterating his promise to make English the only language on ballots.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Utah became the first state to give the political scion , who
is running for president as an independent, a spot on its ballot.

Chris Christie: The former Republican governor of New Jersey said in a new ad
that he was wrong to endorse Trump in 2016 .

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