President Biden called for American unity in a rare Oval Office address on Sunday night, the day after a gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
“My fellow Americans, tonight I want to speak to you about easing political tensions and remembering that we may have differences, but we are not enemies,” the 81-year-old president said.
“We are neighbors, we are friends, we are colleagues, we are citizens, and above all, we are fellow Americans. We must come together.”
Biden said he was “grateful” that Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, had survived with only minor injuries, and called the fatally injured rally attendee, Corey Comperatore, 50, a “hero.”
In his roughly seven-minute speech, the president called on viewers to “step back and reflect on where we are and where we go from here.”
“Thankfully, former Trump [sic] “He is not seriously injured. I spoke with him last night. I’m thankful that he is OK, and Jill and I are praying for him and his family,” Biden said.
“We also extend our deepest condolences to the family of the victim who fell. Corey was a husband, father, volunteer firefighter and hero who protected his family from gunfire. We should all be praying for his family and all those injured.”
Comperatore, 50, was the fire chief for nearby Buffalo Township.
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Biden, who has come under fire from Republicans for calling on Democrats last Monday to put a metaphorical “target” on President Trump (78), urged Americans not to jump to conclusions about the motives of the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks (20), who was shot and killed by Secret Service agents.
“We still don’t know the shooter’s motive. We don’t know his beliefs or affiliations. We don’t know whether he had help or assistance or was in contact with anyone else. Those questions are being investigated by law enforcement experts as I speak,” Biden said.
“Tonight I want to tell you what we know: A former president was shot and an American citizen was murdered simply for exercising their freedom to support the candidate of their choice. We cannot and must not go down this path in America. We have gone down this path before in our history.”
Biden linked the shooting to other shocking incidents of what he called political violence, including the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and a failed plot in 2020 to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
“From the targeting and shootings of members of both parties, to the mob storming our Capitol on January 6th, to the brutal attack on former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s spouse, to the intimidation of election officials, the attempted kidnapping of a sitting governor, and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, violence has never been the answer,” Biden said.
“This kind of violence has no place in America. No kind of violence is an exception. We cannot allow this kind of violence to be normalized.”
Biden called on Americans to resolve their differences “with the ballot box, not with bullets.”
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“As we approach an election, these are trying times for all of us. And the higher the stakes, the hotter the passions are,” Biden said.
“This places an added burden on each of us to ensure that no matter how strong our beliefs may be, they never turn to violence.”
Biden also urged listeners to reach out to people with different viewpoints and warned against “misinformation,” a term the Biden administration has applied to fact-based information in the past.
“Here in America, we need to get out of silos where we only listen to those we agree with, where misinformation flourishes, and where foreign powers stoke division to engineer outcomes that align with their interests rather than our own,” he said.
Before the assassination attempt, Biden had been facing growing calls for him to resign, including from at least 20 House Democrats and one Senate Democrat, following his disastrous defeat to Trump in the June 27 debate.
Biden has insisted he will continue campaigning for a second term despite widespread concerns about his cognitive ability and the fact that he is trailing Trump in most national and battleground state polls.
