US President Joe Biden and his Republican rival Donald Trump have called on Americans to put aside political divisions and come together after Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt.
In a six-and-a-half-minute speech from the Oval Office on Sunday night, Biden said political violence cannot be normalized and that all Americans have a responsibility to “keep cool” when it comes to heated political discourse.
“America cannot and must not go down this path. We have gone down this same path throughout history,” Biden said. “Violence is never the answer.”
Biden acknowledged that there are significant differences between Democrats and Republicans and said he would continue to articulate his vision for the country ahead of the November presidential election, but said political differences must always be resolved through a vote.
“Disagreements are inevitable in an American democracy; it's human nature. But politics must never become a literal battlefield or, pray to God, a killing field,” he said.
Biden's prime-time speech came as the US was still reeling from the first assassination attempt to kill a sitting or former president since the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan.
On Saturday, a gunman shot former President Trump in the ear at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving his face covered in blood.
The attack left 50-year-old former fire chief Corey Comperatore dead and several others injured.
Investigators are still investigating the motive of the suspect, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who was shot and killed by authorities shortly after opening fire at the rally.
The FBI said it believed Crooks, a registered Republican who also donated to Democratic-leaning political action committees, acted alone and that it had not yet identified any particular ideological ties.
The assassination attempt transformed a bitter campaign in which both candidates have portrayed each other as an existential threat, and dramatically shifted attention away from weeks of litigation about Biden's age and health following his disastrous performance in last month's debate.
Biden, who has viewed Trump as a serious threat to American democracy, temporarily halted television advertising and political messaging in the wake of the attack.
Biden told reporters at the White House on Sunday that he had a “brief but meaningful conversation” with Trump in a phone call after the attack.
“Jill and I are praying for him and his family, and our deepest condolences go out to the family of the victim who fell. He was a father, and he was protecting his family from the bullets that were fired,” Biden said.
Trump, who has accused Biden of undermining democracy and weaponizing the justice system against him, arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Sunday ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention. Trump is due to be formally nominated as the party's candidate later this week.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Sunday, Trump said he plans to deliver a completely different speech to the convention than the “great” speech he had originally planned.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, and even the whole world, together. The speech will be very different to what it was two days ago,” he told the newspaper.
Earlier, Trump said on his platform “Truth Social” that Americans must unite and “not let evil win,” and that he decided to attend the convention as scheduled because “we cannot allow a 'shooter' or potential assassin to force us to change the schedule or anything like that.”
Since the assassination attempt, some of Trump's most prominent supporters have become more aggressive, accusing Biden and the Democratic Party of creating an environment for violence.
Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, considered the leading candidate to be Trump's running mate, accused the Biden campaign of portraying Trump as “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.”
“Those comments directly led to the assassination attempt on President Trump,” Vance said in a post on X on Saturday.
Some political analysts have suggested the attack, which took place in Pennsylvania, a battleground state seen as crucial to Biden's reelection hopes, increases Trump's chances of winning the November election.
Pollster Frank Luntz said he expects Trump's vote share to increase by 1 to 2 percentage points.
“It's hard to imagine Biden or any Democratic candidate now loudly attacking a former president with populist attacks, almost depriving him of the ability to play the Trump card by labeling a president who just survived a real threat to democracy as a 'threat to democracy,'” Luntz posted on X on Sunday.
“Trump will lose the 2024 presidential election.”
Biden, who is trailing Trump in most opinion polls, acknowledged in his speech that his record and policies would be criticized at the convention as part of the normal democratic process.
“We debate. We disagree. We compare and contrast our candidates' character, their record, the issues, the policies and their vision for America. But in America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box,” Biden said, vowing to continue calling for democracy and “action at the ballot box.”
“That's how we do it — with the ballot box, not with bullets. The power to change America should always be in the hands of the people, not in the hands of would-be assassins.”
