WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden warned Sunday of the risks of political violence in the United States following Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, saying: “It’s time to calm down.”
In a prime-time address from the Oval Office, Biden said political passions can run high, but “we must never descend into violence.” The president acknowledged the passions of an election year and that he and Republicans have different policy visions, but implored Americans to “recommit” to resolving their differences peacefully.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence – for any violence. Ever. Period. No exceptions. We cannot allow this violence to be normalized,” Biden said.
Biden delivered a six-minute speech in his third address to the nation since Saturday night’s attack by a gunman who killed one rallygoer and seriously wounded two others. His warning came hours after FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said agents had seen increasingly violent rhetoric online since the attack at Trump’s rally.
The president and his team have grappled with how to calibrate the path forward after the weekend’s attack on the very person Biden is trying to defeat in the November election.
The president noted that the Republican National Convention opens Monday in Milwaukee, while he himself will resume the reelection campaign after interrupting his schedule to deal with the immediate response to the shooting. Biden said he had “no doubt” that Republicans “will criticize my record and come up with their own vision for this country” and promised to campaign on his own ideas, but said those disagreements must remain peaceful.
“We can do it,” Biden pleaded, asserting that the nation was founded on a democracy that gave reason and balance a chance to prevail over brute force. “American democracy, where arguments are made in good faith. American democracy, where the rule of law is respected. Where decency and dignity and fair play are not just quaint notions, but living, breathing realities.”
Biden also warned that political tensions were being stoked by a balkanized media environment and exploited by America’s enemies.
“Here in America, we must break out of our silos, where we listen only to those with whom we agree, where misinformation is rampant, where foreign actors fan the flames of our division to shape outcomes consistent with their interests, not ours,” Biden said.
On Sunday morning, he was briefed in the White House Situation Room and condemned the attempted assassination of his predecessor, Trump, as “contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.” He said he was ordering an independent security investigation into the circumstances of such an attack.
The president also said he had asked the Secret Service to review all security arrangements for the Republican convention. Hours later, Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, the Secret Service’s coordinator for the convention, said the weekend attack on Trump had not prompted any changes to the agency’s security plan for the event and that officials “are fully prepared.”
Biden called on the country to “come together as one nation,” promised a “thorough and swift” review and asked the public not to “make assumptions” about the shooter’s motives or affiliations.
The president said he and first lady Jill Biden were praying for the family of Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief who was shot and killed at Trump’s rally Saturday night in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“He was protecting his family from bullets,” Biden said. “God bless him.”
The president also said he had a “brief but good conversation” with Trump in the hours after the shooting and was “sincerely grateful” that the former president “is doing well and recovering.”
Trump, who has called for national resilience since the shooting, posted on his social media account after Biden’s remarks: “LET’S UNITE AMERICA!”
Biden, who has decided to portray Trump as a grave threat to democracy and the nation’s founding principles, has temporarily paused such political messaging. Shortly after Saturday night’s attack, Biden’s reelection campaign froze “all outbound communications” and worked to pull his television ads.
The president also postponed a planned trip to Texas on Monday, where he was scheduled to speak at the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. An NBC News interview between Biden and anchor Lester Holt will now take place at the White House, instead of in Texas as originally planned.
The Biden campaign said that after the interview airs on NBC Monday night, it and the Democratic National Committee will “continue to draw the contrast” with Trump during the GOP convention — though it remains unclear when the ads will resume.
Biden also plans to travel to Las Vegas, where he will attend a campaign event on Wednesday. Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday postponed her planned campaign trip to Florida, where she was scheduled to meet with Republican women.
Trump, meanwhile, arrived in Milwaukee on Sunday night for the Republican convention, where criticism of Biden and Democrats is sure to be scathing.
The weekend’s developments are just the latest upheaval in a campaign that has been extraordinarily eventful in recent weeks.
Biden’s faltering performance in the June 27 debate so frightened his own party that some of his top spokespeople and donors turned on him, and nearly 20 Democratic members of Congress called on the president to quit the race. Facing growing questions about his fitness for a second term, Biden and his top advisers have scrambled to salvage his campaign by adding events around the country and more aggressively criticizing Trump.
Saturday’s attack has upended — at least for now — that counteroffensive ahead of the Republican convention.
The campaign had hoped Sunday’s Oval Office speech would allow Biden to further hammer home his point about unity while demonstrating leadership that could calm nervous critics within his own party.
“We will debate and we will disagree, that will not change,” Biden said in his afternoon speech. “But we will not lose sight of who we are as Americans.”
Although investigators are still in the early stages of determining what happened and why, some Biden critics have criticized the president for telling donors in a private call Monday that “it’s time to put Trump in the target.”
A person familiar with the remarks said the president was trying to make the point that Trump had been able to get away with a light public schedule after last month’s debate while the president himself was under intense scrutiny. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations more freely.
On the conference call with donors, Biden said: “I have one mission: to defeat Donald Trump. I am absolutely certain that I am the best person to do that.”
He continued: “Okay, we’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump on the spot. He’s gotten away with doing nothing for 10 days except driving around in his golf cart, bragging about scores he didn’t make. … Anyway, I’m not going to get into his golf game.”
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