Joe and Jill Biden meet Jacob Blake’s family during Kenosha visit

Democratic presidential candidate makes rare in-person campaign stop for private meeting with relatives of police-shooting victim

Joe Biden has arrived in Wisconsin to meet the family of Jacob Blake in the wake of protests in Kenosha, where a police officer fired seven rounds at the back of the 29-year-old black man, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.

The Democratic presidential nominee and his wife Jill Biden are visiting the battleground state two days after Donald Trump’s tour of Kenosha, where he praised local and federal law enforcement and toured damaged buildings. The president did not meet with members of Mr Blake’s family.

Mr Blake’s family, including his parents, as well as members of the family’s legal team, met privately with Mr Biden shortly after his arrival in Milwaukee.

The former vice president’s visit, during which he’s expected to participate in a “community meeting” to discuss racial justice and police violence, follows a joint campaign ad with running mate Kamala Harris, who says “part of the point of freedom is to be free from brutality, from injustice, from racism and all of its manifestations.”

Mr Biden’s visit follows his damning rebuke of the president’s rhetoric in a speech from Pittsburgh on Monday, as he accused his rival of fanning the flames of violence and exploiting American vulnerability amid several crises for a campaign of fear.

“This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership,” Mr Biden said in his remarks. “He can’t stop the violence because for years he fomented it ... His failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows you how weak he is.”

The president arrived in Kenosha on Tuesday during a period of relative calm after the city was rocked by the killings of two protesters by an alleged teenaged suspect defended by the president and his allies.

Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old Trump supporter from Illinois who travelled to Wisconsin for the demonstrations, has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, all with a deadly weapon, after allegedly firing a long gun at three protesters, killing two and injuring another.

Moments after defending violent supporters who fired pepper spray and paintball guns at anti-racist protesters in Portland, Oregon, the president on Monday claimed that Mr Rittenhouse was “trying to get away” from protesters “and he fell, and then they very violently attacked him”.

He called a caravan of his supporters in Portland a “peaceful protest” using “paint as a defensive mechanism”.

“Paint is not bullets,” he said.

The president’s much-publicised visit to Kenosha – which Minnesota officials had advised against – included a stop at a burnt-out camera shop, though its owners did not want to participate. He met instead with the shop’s former owner.

He condemned “political violence” and cast blame on “reckless far-left politicians” for property damage following widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism, though he dismissed those concerns and denied the need for structural reform in American policing.

The president claimed that Kenosha residents “want police to be police ... You don’t see them marching and you don’t see them on the streets, but what they want is they want great police force, they want people that are going to keep them safe, where their houses aren’t broken into, where they’re not raped and murdered.”