During an interview broadcast on Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden discussed whether President Trump’s rhetoric is responsible for the El Paso shooting and stated that Trump’s rhetoric almost legitimizes “people coming out from under the rocks.” And “his actions have done nothing to do anything other than encourage this kind of behavior.”

Host Anderson Cooper asked, “Do you blame the president, in part, for what happened in El Paso?”

Biden responded, “What I do, is his rhetoric contributes to this notion that — it almost legitimates people coming out from under the rocks. This is white nationalism. This is terrorism of a different sort, but it’s still terrorism.”

Biden also said, “Can you imagine if you had children in a school where the principal, after a terrible shooting, or after what happened in Charlottesville or what happened in El Paso or what happened in Ohio in Dayton, stood up and said, well, you know, there’s really good — fine people on both sides, or you know, there really are a lot of really bad people coming across the border, and they’re going to pollute our [unintelligible] all of those things he said, paraphrasing him, what do you think would happen? Parents would be asking for that principal to be fired, and if anything happened to that school, would they say he’s the — that he caused it? Well, maybe he didn’t cause it, but he sure in fact did not do anything to make it clear it’s reprehensible conduct that will not be tolerated.”

Biden further stated, “Clearly, his actions have done nothing to do anything other than encourage this kind of behavior.”

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