Joe Biden uses Charlottesville as motivation for 2020 run: 'We are in the battle for the soul of this nation'

Joe Biden is officially in the race for president.

His long-awaited answer to the biggest political question in the country the past few months ended on Thursday, making him one of 20 Democrats vying to become the party's 2020 presidential nominee.

"The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America America is at stake," he said in a video posted to Facebook and Twitter on Thursday morning. "That's why today I'm announcing my candidacy for president of the United States."

The announcement from the 76-year-old former vice president comes three years after he declined to seek the country's highest political office — a time in which he and his family were grieving the death of his oldest son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.

In his announcement, Biden went after President Donald Trump and the statements he made after violent clashes between activists and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

In the wake of the demonstrations, which killed one person, Trump said there were fine people on "both sides," a remark that drew wide condemnation.

"With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence to those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it," Biden said in the video. "In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime."