Biden to Proud Boys: 'Cease and desist'
"My message to the Proud Boys and every other white supremacist group is: cease and desist," Biden said at a campaign stop in Alliance, Ohio, one of the battleground states in the Nov. 3 election.
"The American people will decide who the next president is, period," Biden added.
Trump had called on the "Proud Boys" to "stand back and stand by" when asked at the debate to repudiate white supremacists, raising concerns that he was encouraging the group to act as freelance poll monitors.
The Proud Boys describes itself as a club of "Western chauvinists" but has been categorized as a hate group by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center.
White House officials played down Trump's comment about the all-male Proud Boys group, which has been involved in counter-protests to demonstrations about race and policing in Portland, Oregon, in recent weeks. Its members often come armed.
"The president has condemned white supremacy countless times," Alyssa Farah, the White House communications director, told Fox News on Wednesday. "I don't think that there is anything to clarify. He told them to stand back ... He's leading. He doesn't need any sort of vigilantism."
