Biden to visit Wisconsin, now a 2020 flash point

Joe Biden is traveling to Wisconsin on Thursday, as the key swing state becomes the focal point for a political debate over violence at protests there and elsewhere in the nation.

Biden plans to travel to the state with his wife Jill, the campaign announced Wednesday.

His visit comes two days after President Donald Trump toured Kenosha, Wisconsin, the site of recent protests following the shooting of an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake, left paralyzed after being shot in the back seven times by an officer. Trump used the opportunity to drive home his campaign message of "law and order" by expressing support for law enforcement and blaming "domestic terror" for the looting and arson that’s taken place in the city during the protests.

The president and his allies are hoping to use the violence at recent protests against Biden, and have charged that if the Democrat were elected such incidents would become the norm.

Biden has repeatedly denounced the protest violence but has expressed sympathy for protesters’ concerns over systemic racism and a commitment to enact police reforms if elected.

It will be Biden’s first visit to Wisconsin in nearly two years. It comes after Biden decided against accepting the party’s nomination in Milwaukee, where the Democratic National Convention was to have been held. Instead, the convention was mostly virtual amid the coronavirus pandemic.