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 address from the Oval Office on Sunday night, Biden said political violence cannot be normalized and that all Americans have a responsibility to “calm the situation” when it comes to heated political rhetoric.
“We cannot, we must not, go down that road in America. We’ve been down that road before throughout our history,” Biden said. “Violence is never the answer.”
Acknowledging the stark differences between Democrats and Republicans, Biden said he would continue to articulate his vision for the country ahead of the November presidential election, but that political disagreements should always be resolved at the ballot box.
“Disagreement is inevitable in American democracy. It is human nature. But politics should never be a literal battlefield or, God forbid, a killing field,” he said.
Biden's prime-time address came as the United States absorbed the ramifications of the first assassination attempt on a current or former president since the shooting of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Trump was left with a bloody face after a gunman opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, hitting the former president in the ear.
Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief, was killed and several others were injured in the attack.
Investigators are still looking into the motives of the suspected shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot and killed by authorities shortly after opening fire on the protest.
The FBI has said it believes Crooks, who was registered as a Republican but also donated money to a Democratic-aligned political action committee, acted alone and has not yet identified any association with a particular ideology.
The assassination attempt has reshaped a bitter race in which each candidate has portrayed the other as an existential threat, sharply diverting attention from weeks of commentary about Biden’s age and physical condition following a disastrous debate performance last month.
Biden, who has called Trump a grave danger to American democracy, temporarily suspended television ads and political messaging following the attack.
Earlier on Sunday, Biden told reporters at the White House that he had a “brief but good conversation” with Trump in a phone call after the attack.
“Jill and I are keeping him and his family in our prayers. We also send our deepest condolences to the family of the victim who was killed. He was a father, he was protecting his family from the bullets that were being fired,” Biden said.
Trump, who has accused Biden of threatening democracy and weaponizing the justice system against him, arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Sunday ahead of the opening of the Republican National Convention, where he will be formally named the party's nominee later this week.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Sunday, Trump said he would give a “totally different speech” at the convention than the “tremendous” one he had originally planned.
“This is an opportunity to unite the whole country, even the whole world. The speech will be very different, very different from what it would have been two days ago,” he told the newspaper.
Trump previously said on his Truth Social platform that Americans should stand together and not allow “evil to win.” He said he had decided to attend the convention as planned because “I cannot allow a ‘shooter’ or a potential assassin to force a change in scheduling or anything else.”
Some high-profile Trump allies have gone on the offensive since the assassination attempt, accusing Biden and Democrats of creating the conditions for violence.
Ohio senator JD Vance, considered a 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.”
“That rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump,” Vance said in a post on X on Saturday.
Some political analysts have suggested the attack will increase the likelihood of a Trump victory in November, particularly since it took place in Pennsylvania, a key swing state seen as crucial to Biden's re-election hopes.
Pollster Frank Luntz said he expected Trump's vote share to rise by one or two percentage points.
“It’s hard to imagine Biden or any of the potential Democratic candidates now launching vigorous, crowd-pleasing attacks on the former president, taking away most of their ability to play the Trump card by labeling him a ‘threat to democracy’ when he just survived a real threat to democracy,” Luntz said in a post on X on Sunday.
“Trump could now lose the 2024 presidential election.”
In his speech, Biden, who is trailing Trump in most polls, acknowledged that his record and policies would come under fire at the convention as part of the normal democratic process.
“We debate and we disagree, we compare and contrast the candidates’ character, their backgrounds, the issues, the agenda, the vision for America. But in America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box,” Biden said, pledging to continue to stand up for democracy and “action at the ballot box.”
“This is how we do it, at the ballot box, not with bullets. The power to change America must always be in the hands of the people, not in the hands of a would-be assassin.”
