WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Sunday warned of the risk of political violence in the United States after Saturday's election. Assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump“It's time to calm down,” he said.
In a prime-time address to the nation from the Oval Office, President Biden said political passions will run high but “we must never descend into violence.”
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, any kind of violence. Never. Period. No exceptions. We cannot allow this kind of violence to be normalized,” Biden said.
Biden spoke for about five minutes in the Oval Office. Republican National Convention The opening ceremony was held in Milwaukee on Monday while he himself was scheduled to tour the country in his re-election bid.
He said passions will run high on both sides and the stakes of the election will be huge.
“We can do it,” Biden said, saying the country was built on a democracy where reason and balance have a chance to prevail over violence. “In American democracy, debate is conducted in good faith. In American democracy, the rule of law is respected. Civility, dignity and fair play are not just old-fashioned concepts, they are lived realities.”
On Sunday, Biden condemned the assassination attempt on his predecessor. TrumpThe president said the attack “goes against everything we stand for as a nation” and said he would order an independent national security investigation into how such an attack could have happened.
He called for the country to “stand together as one nation,” promised a “thorough and swift” investigation and urged people “not to speculate” about the shooter's motives or affiliations.
The president also said he had instructed the US Secret Service to review all security arrangements for the Republican National Convention. Hours later, Secret Service convention coordinator Audrey Gibson Cicchino said the weekend attack on Trump had not changed the agency's convention security plans and that officials were “fully prepared.”
In his speech, Biden said the attacks on Trump were “not about the nature of our country.”
“This is un-American, and we cannot allow this to happen,” he said. “Unity is the hardest goal to achieve, but nothing is more important right now.”
The president said he and First Lady Jill Biden were praying for the families. Corey ComperatoreA former fire chief was shot and killed during a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night.
“He was protecting his family from bullets,” Biden said. “God love him.”
The president also said he had a “brief but meaningful conversation” with Trump in the hours after the shooting, and said he was “profoundly grateful” that the former president was “in good health and recovering.”
Trump, who has called for the nation to recover since the shooting, posted to his social media accounts in response to Biden's comments: “Let's unite America!”
Achieving unity in reality will be much harder, especially in the midst of a fierce presidential campaign, as Biden's team struggles to calibrate its course going forward in the wake of a weekend attack on the very man he is trying to defeat. November Elections.
Biden is Trump A serious threat to democracy Biden has suspended such political messaging, calling it antithetical to the nation's founding principles. Shortly after Saturday night's attack, Biden's reelection campaign froze “all outgoing communications” and was working to pull its television ads.
The president also postponed a trip planned for Monday to Texas, where he was scheduled to speak at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library about the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Biden's interview with NBC News host Lester Holt will take place at the White House instead of in Texas as originally scheduled.
The Biden campaign said after the NBC interview aired Monday night that it and the Democratic National Committee would “continue to draw contrasts” with Trump throughout the Republican convention, but it remains unclear when the ads will resume.
Biden also has a planned trip to Las Vegas scheduled for Wednesday, including a campaign stop. Kamala Harris She postponed a campaign trip to Florida on Tuesday, where she was scheduled to meet with Republican women.
Meanwhile, Trump announced he was moving up plans to attend Milwaukee and the Republican National Convention, where criticism of Biden and the Democrats is sure to intensify.
The weekend developments are The election campaign has been extraordinarily chaotic in recent weeks..
Biden's Unstable debate performance On June 27, he so frightened his own party that some of its top supporters and donors turned against him. About 20 Democratic lawmakers Biden and his top advisers have called on the president to withdraw from the race altogether amid growing doubts about whether he is fit for a second term. Adding an event Across the country, people are becoming more vocal in their criticism of President Trump.
Saturday's attack eclipsed, at least for now, the pushback on the eve of the Republican convention.
The campaign is also hoping that Biden will use an Oval Office address on Sunday to double down on his claims of unity and provide leadership to ease nervous criticism within his party.
“We will debate and we will disagree. That won't change,” Biden said in an afternoon speech, “but we will never lose sight of who we are as Americans.”
While investigators are still in the early stages of determining what happened and why, some Biden critics have faulted the president for telling donors in a private call on Monday that “it's time to go on the offensive against Trump.”
The president was trying to argue that Trump had gotten away with a light public schedule after last month's debate while he faced intense scrutiny, according to a person familiar with the comments, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak more freely about private conversations.
“My job is one and only: to defeat Donald Trump. … I believe I'm the best person to do that,” Biden said on a call with donors.
He continued, “So, enough about the debate. Time to attack Trump. He's had nothing to do for the last 10 days except ride around in a golf cart and brag about scores he didn't get. … Either way, I'm not getting involved in his golf game.”
