President Biden gathered disaffected Black supporters on Monday, vehemently condemning former President Donald J. Trump and connecting his efforts to overturn the 2020 election to the nation’s history of white supremacy, which he referred to as “the old ghost in new garments.”
Delivering his speech from the pulpit of the South’s oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mr. Biden drew parallels between slavery, the Civil War, and Jim Crow, and the divisions of today. He called Mr. Trump’s insistence that he won the election an attempt to rewrite history and characterized it as a “self-serving lie.”
Addressing about 700 parishioners and other guests at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Biden stated, “Once again, there are some in this country trying to turn loss into a lie — a lie which, if allowed to live, will once again bring terrible damage to this country. This time, the lie is about the 2020 election.”
Mr. Biden also took a dig at Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and onetime ambassador to the United Nations, for refusing to acknowledge slavery as the cause of the Civil War.
The visit to South Carolina, the state that played a significant role in Mr. Biden becoming the Democratic nominee nearly four years ago, was the second part of the president’s two-stage opening campaign swing of the election year. In his speech near Valley Forge, Pa., on Friday, he denounced Mr. Trump on the eve of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Mr. Biden aimed to remind a key voting bloc of the significance of the election in November by speaking at the storied Black church where a white supremacist killed the pastor and eight parishioners in 2015.
It was noted that Mr. Biden often attributed his decision to run for president in 2020 to Mr. Trump’s racial provocations.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina accused Mr. Biden on Monday of using scare tactics to regain confidence among all minority groups. Black Democrats in South Carolina helped save Mr. Biden’s campaign for the party’s nomination, and the president has since positioned South Carolina as the first primary state for 2024.
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. Biden also criticized Mr. Trump for his response to gun violence and mentioned a school shooting in Iowa where an 11-year-old was killed. A few protesters briefly interrupted the president’s appearance on Monday.
Following his stop in Charleston on Monday, Mr. Biden planned to fly to 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.
