Biden spoke from the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church, where in 2015 nine Black worshipers were shot to death by the white stranger they had invited to join their Bible study. The Democratic president’s speech followed his blunt remarks Friday on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, in which he excoriated former President Trump for “glorifying” rather than condemning political violence.

At Mother Emanuel, Biden said to the overwhelmingly Black audience, “the word of God was pierced by bullets of hate, propelled not just by gunpowder, but by poison,” adding: “What is that poison?”

“White supremacy,” he said, calling views by whites that they are superior to everyone else a “poison that for too long has haunted this nation. This has no place in America, not today, tomorrow or ever.”

It’s a grim way to kick off a presidential campaign, particularly for a man known for his optimism and belief that American achievements are limitless. But his campaign advisors and aides say it’s necessary to lay out the stakes in unequivocal terms three years after the cultural saturation of Trump’s words and actions while he was president. And it’s an effort to set up the contrast they hope will be paramount to voters in 2024.

“It shows the campaign meeting the moment,” former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield said. “We’re facing a fundamental threat to our democracy in the form of Donald Trump, and rather than a cookie-cutter launch — you know, here are my five policy platforms — he’s speaking to people in a way that connects that and that lays out the stark challenges that are coming down the barrel.”

It was June 17, 2015, when a 21-year-old white man walked into the church and, intending to ignite a race war, shot and killed nine Black worshipers and wounded one more. Biden was vice president when he attended the memorial service in Charleston, where President Obama famously sang “Amazing Grace.”

Biden’s aides and allies say the shootings were among the critical moments when the nation’s political divide started to sharpen and crack. Though Trump, who leads polls for the 2024 GOP nomination, was not in office at the time and has called the shooting “horrible,” Biden is seeking to tie Trump’s current rhetoric to such violence.

Two years after the attack, the “Unite the Right” gathering of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., erupted in violent clashes with counterprotesters. Trump said merely that “there is blame on both sides.”

Biden and his aides argue it’s all part of the same problem: Trump refused to condemn the actions of the white nationalists at that gathering. Trump has repeatedly used rhetoric once used by Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country,” yet insisted he had no idea that Hitler once used similar words.

And Trump has continually repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election, as well as his assertion that the Capitol rioters were patriotic. He’s called the long prison sentences handed down for some offenders — whom he calls “hostages” and were convicted of crimes including assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy — “one of the saddest things.”

Rep. James E. Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, said the election “will determine the fate of American democracy, our freedoms, and whether this country will stand up against hate and vitriol embodied by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans,” a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

“Few places embody these stakes like Mother Emanuel AME — a church that has witnessed the horrors of hate-fueled political violence and a church that has spoken to the conscience of this nation and shown us the path forward after moments of division and despair,” Clyburn said in a statement.

In his Jan. 6 anniversary eve speech, Biden told people in the audience that Trump doesn’t care about their future.

“Trump is now promising a full-scale campaign of ‘revenge’ and ‘retribution’ — his words — for some years to come,” Biden said. “They were his words, not mine. He went on to say he would be a dictator on Day One.”

Biden has repeatedly suggested that democracy itself is on the ballot this year, asking whether it is still “America’s sacred cause.”

Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his loss to Biden and three other felony cases, argues — without citing evidence — that Biden and other top Democrats are themselves seeking to undermine democracy by using the legal system to thwart the campaign of Biden’s chief rival.

South Carolina is the first official Democratic nominating contest where Biden is looking to flex his political muscle this year, and it’s where his turnaround in 2020 began on his way to the White House.

In an interview with the Associated Press before Biden’s church appearance, Malcolm Graham, the younger brother of Charleston church victim Cynthia Graham-Hurd, said he planned to thank the president for broaching the topic of extremism.

Talking about the threat of racism and hate-fueled violence is part of a needed national conversation about race and democracy, said Graham, a city councilman in Charlotte, N.C.

“Racism, hatred and discrimination continue to be the Achilles’ heel of America, of our nation,” he said. “Certainly, what happened to the Emanuel nine years ago is a visible example of that. What happened in Buffalo, years later, where people [at a supermarket] were killed under similar circumstances, shows that racism and discrimination are still real and it’s even in our politics.”

Graham, a former state senator in North Carolina, said it was shameful that some politicians still struggle to link the Civil War and slavery, and that others have attacked diversity, equity and inclusion programs for political gain. He says the Trump administration was a preview of what it’s like to have a new generation of white nationalists in power.

“As a nation, we can’t eradicate racism, hatred and discrimination, if it’s in the Oval Office,” he said. “We have to chart a different course.”

Biden was to meet with families of victims of the church shooting, and it’s in such moments when his aides believe he’s most effective. “This is a personal strength of his, and his ability to do this in an emotional way that connects with people is not to be underappreciated,” Bedingfield said. “Because these are hard things to talk about. And it’s hard to talk about them in a way that doesn’t make people feel defeated. And he can do that.”