Joe Biden speaks out against violence in cities across US
Will other Democrats follow his lead? Fox Nation host Lawrence Jones weighs in.
Fox Nation host Lawrence Jones on Thursday weighed in on the rioting occurring in Kenosha, Wis., in the wake of the police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake.
“There are a lot of people that want to be for the movement. You just can’t burn the cities down,” Jones told “Fox & Friends.”
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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden condemned the violence in Kenosha in the wake of the shooting of Blake on Wednesday, saying “needless violence won’t heal us.”
The former vice president’s comments came amid days of unrest in Kenosha after 29-year-old Blake, a Black man, was shot at close range by city police officers, leaving him partially paralyzed.
New footage emerged Tuesday of the moments before Blake was shot multiple times in the back by a White Wisconsin police officer as Blake tried to get into his vehicle. The video reportedly captured Blake engaged in a struggle with at least two Kenosha police officers and shows an officer appearing to try to restrain him before he managed to get up and walk to the driver’s side door.
Viral video taken from another vantage point shows an officer fire several rounds into the apparently unarmed man’s back.
“What I saw in that video makes me sick,” Biden said. “Once again, a Black man, Jacob Blake, has been shot by the police in broad daylight with the whole world watching.”
Biden said he spoke with Blake’s family and told them “justice must and will be done.”
“Put yourself in the shoes of every Black mother and Black father in this country and ask, is this what we want America to be? Is this the country we should be?” Biden said.
Biden recalled the unrest after the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd in police custody in May.
“Protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary, but burning down communities is not protest,” he said about the unrest after Floyd's killing.
On Wednesday, he struck a similar tone.
“It is needless violence,” Biden said. “Violence that endangers lives and guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community. That's wrong.”
Biden said the country needs to unite, heal, do justice, end violence and end systemic racism.
"Needless violence won’t heal us," Biden tweeted. "We need to end the violence — and peacefully come together to demand justice."
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Jones, the host of "One Nation" on Fox Nation, said Black people are “tired” of cities being burned down.
“If you give people the choice as I continue to say between all the rest of their issues and safety, they’re going to pick safety every single time,” he said.
“The sad thing in many cases, it has become a binary choice. You can be for justice and still say my city deserves to live, businesses deserve to be protected. Right now, you got to choose one or the other and I don’t think that is productive at all,” Jones said.
“Liberty and life have to be our cause. Right now, it is not,” Jones said.
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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