The 2020 Democratic presidential candidates escalated their rhetorical jabs against President Trump on Wednesday in their attempts to pin the blame of the weekend’s mass shootings on him.

As the president comforted families of the victims in Texas and Ohio, the Democratic hopefuls accused Mr. Trump of purposely inflaming racist tendencies that America has long struggled to overcome, which they said set off a surge of white supremacist violence.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, the front-runner in the Democratic race, said the bloodshed underscored Mr. Trump’s failure as a president and his lack of “moral authority to lead.”

“He has more in common with George Wallace than he does with George Washington,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the avowed segregationist who unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1960s.

“Our president has aligned himself with the darkest forces in this nation. And it makes winning this battle for the soul of our nation that much tougher,” Mr. Biden said in a speech in Burlington, Iowa.

The diatribe against Mr. Trump lasted 34 minutes.

In Charleston, South Carolina, Sen. Cory A. Booker delivered an impassioned speech in which he said Mr. Trump “sowed the seeds” of hatred that led to the violence.

“White supremacy has always been a problem in our American story — if not always at the surface, then lurking not so far beneath it,” he said from the pulpit at Mother Emanuel AME Church, the site of a 2015 mass shooting in which a 21-year-old white supremacist killed nine people at a Bible study meeting.

Mr. Booker, who is among several black candidates in the race, said Mr. Trump’s vow to “build a wall” and warnings of a migrant “invasion” are fueling white supremacist hatred. He also blamed the country’s legacy of racism that he said was ingrained in U.S. laws and culture.

Most of the 2020 Democratic hopefuls have blamed Mr. Trump for the shooting Saturday in El Paso, Texas, as well as faulting him for not doing enough to curb gun violence.

An online white supremacist screed has been linked to the suspected gunman, Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, who is accused of opening fire on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart shopping center, killing 22 people.

A shooting the next day in Dayton, Ohio, did not appear to involve racism. The motivation of Connor Betts, who killed nine people including his sister in the attack before he was fatally shot by police, remains a mystery.

Mr. Trump on Wednesday visited Dayton and El Paso, where he said he would push for an expansion of federal background checks for gun buyers.

On Monday, he denounced racism and white supremacy and called for the nation to unite in confronting all forms of hatred.

The president dismissed Mr. Biden’s full-throated attack.

“Watching Sleepy Joe Biden making a speech. Sooo Boring! The LameStream Media will die in the ratings and clicks with this guy,” he tweeted. “It will be over for them, not to mention the fact that our Country will do poorly with him. It will be one big crash, but at least China will be happy!”

Mr. Biden launched his campaign as a run against what he said was the racism and bigotry of the Trump presidency, and the apparent white supremacist motivation of the mass shooting in El Paso fit neatly into the narrative.

“Trump offers no moral leadership, seems to have no interest in unifying this nation, no evidence that the presidency has awakened his conscience in the least,” he said.

He described Mr. Trump as someone with a “toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced the political strategy of hate, racism and division.”

Mr. Booker is running on a message of “love,” racial justice and gun control. He has struggled to break out of the low single digits in the polls.

In his speech, he said the political atmosphere could not be separated from the acts of violence and reports that hate crimes are on the rise.

“Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny. These tactics aren’t a new perversion of our politics, they’ve been ingrained in our politics since our founding,” he said. “Generations of politicians have used fear of the other for political gain, and that is certainly the case today.”

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