THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

Joe Biden called out the "underlying racism" in America Thursday as he sought to soothe the protest-scarred Midwestern city of Kenosha, where the presidential hopeful spoke with a black father shot in the back by a white policeman.

Biden sat down for a private talk with Jacob Blake's father and other relatives, and revealed later that he had spoken for about 15 minutes by telephone with Blake as the 29-year-old was recovering in hospital.

"He talked about how nothing was going to defeat him, how whether he walked again or not, he was not going to give up," Biden said of Blake, whose lawyers say he is likely paralyzed from the waist down.

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Describing himself repeatedly as an optimist, Biden -- speaking through a face mask -- told a small community gathering in Kenosha that the majority of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement for racial equality.

But he also warned that President Donald Trump has fueled the racial animus which has roiled the nation in recent months.

"Not all his fault," but Trump's heated and racially charged language "legitimizes the dark side of human nature," Biden said at Grace Lutheran Church, where a crowd of mostly-masked supporters gathered outside.

The president's rhetoric has exposed "the underlying racism that is institutionalized in the United States, and still exists, and has existed for 400 years," he added.

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