BUFFALO (AP/1010 WINS) — President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden on Tuesday visited Buffalo, where the president said a mass shooting that left 10 Black people dead at a supermarket in the city three days earlier was “domestic terrorism that we must confront” as a nation.
The president and first lady touched down at the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport around 9:30 a.m. with Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. They were greeted at the airport by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, as well as local police and fire officials.
The Bidens first visited the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue where authorities said a white supremacist targeted Black people with an assault rifle in the most lethal racist attack since Biden took office. The Bidens stopped at a makeshift memorial of blossoms, candles and messages of condolence outside the market around 10 a.m.
The president and first lady then met privately with families of the victims, first responders and local officials. After meeting with the families, Biden spoke at the Delavan Grider Community Center, where he called for stricter gun laws and urged Americans to reject racism and embrace the nation’s diversity.
“In America, evil will not win, I promise you,” Biden said. “Hate will not prevail, white supremacy will not have the last word.”
“Evil did come to Buffalo, and it’s come to all too many places, manifested in a gunman who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology rooted in fear and racism,” the president continued. “It’s taken so much. Ten lives cut short in a grocery store, three others wounded by a hate-filled individual who had driven 200 miles to carry out a murderous, racist rampage that he would livestream to the world. What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism.”
In Buffalo, the president was confronting anew the forces of hatred he frequently says called him back to seek the White House.
“Jill and I have come to stand with you, and to the families, we have come to grieve with you," Biden said. He added: “Now’s the time for people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority and American and reject white supremacy.”
Hochul spoke at the community center before Biden, urging action to reform gun laws and stamp out racism.
“God, give us the strength to forge ahead with the strength and conviction that justice must be done but also changes must be made, and we’ll all remember that it started here in Buffalo, New York,” the governor said.
Biden's condemnation of white supremacy is a message he has delivered several times since he became the first president to specifically address white supremacy in an inaugural speech, calling it “domestic terrorism that we must confront.” However, such beliefs remain an entrenched threat at a time when his administration has been focused on addressing the pandemic, inflation and the war in Ukraine.
“It’s important for him to show up for the families and the community and express his condolences,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP. “But we’re more concerned with preventing this from happening in the future.”
It's unclear how Biden will try to do that. Proposals for new gun restrictions have routinely been blocked by Republicans. In addition, the racism that was spouted in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 appears to have only spread.
Ten people were killed and three more were wounded in Saturday's shooting. Nearly all the victims were Black, including all of those who died.
On Monday, Biden paid particular tribute to one of the victims, retired police officer Aaron Salter, who was working as a security guard at the store. He said Salter “gave his life trying to save others” by opening fire at the gunman, only to be killed himself.
Payton Gendron, 18, was arrested at the supermarket and charged with murder. He has pleaded not guilty.
Before the shooting, Gendron is reported to have posted online a screed overflowing with racism and antisemitism. The writer of the document described himself as a supporter of Dylan Roof, who killed nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, and Brenton Tarrant, who targeted mosques in New Zealand in 2019.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Gendron is “someone who has hate in their heart, soul and mind,” and he called the attack on the store “an absolute racist hate crime.”
So far investigators are looking at Gendron's connection to what's known as the “great replacement" theory, which baselessly claims white people are being intentionally overrun by other races through immigration or higher birth rates.
The racist ideology is often interwoven with antisemitism, with Jews identified as the culprits. During the 2017 “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, the white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us."
"Many of those dark voices still exist today,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. “And the president is determined as he was back then . . . to make sure we fight back against those forces of hate and evil and violence.”
In the years since Charlottesville, replacement theory has moved from the online fringe to mainstream right-wing politics. A third of U.S. adults believe there is “a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who agree with their political views,” according to a poll conducted in December by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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