Joe Biden on Sunday strongly condemned political violence and urged a nation still reeling from the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump to reject “extremism and anger.”
In a prime-time address from the Oval Office, Biden said Americans must seek “national unity” and warned that US political rhetoric was getting “overheated” as national emotions run high in the final months before the November presidential election.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, any kind of violence. Never. Period. No exceptions,” the president said. “We cannot allow this kind of violence to be normalized.”
Biden’s urging for Americans to “stay calm” came just after Trump said in his speech at the Republican National Convention that he would “bring together the whole country, and indeed the whole world.”
“The speech is going to be very different from what it was two days ago,” Trump told the Washington Examiner, adding that the reality of what had happened was “finally starting to sink in.”
Biden has ordered an independent investigation into how a gunman gained access to a rooftop overlooking a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday and fired multiple shots at the former president from an “elevated position” outside the venue. The FBI warned Sunday that already elevated threats of political violence have spiked since the shooting.
The attack, which is being investigated as a possible assassination attempt and act of domestic terrorism, left Trump with an ear injury, while one spectator, identified as a former fire chief, was killed and two others were seriously injured.
“America cannot and must not go down this path,” Biden added, citing rising political violence including the storming of the U.S. Capitol, an attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband and a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Biden also praised former Fire Chief Cory Comperatore, 50, who died while trying to protect his wife and daughter. He called Comperatore a “hero” and offered his “deepest condolences” to his family.
Investigators are still investigating the motive of suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.
More than 24 hours after the attack, the investigation into how Crooks opened fire at the rally using an AR-15 that his father legally purchased remains fluid. Investigators have seized several of Crooks’ devices and are beginning to unravel his communications before the rally. Authorities have said they found a possible explosive device in Crooks’ vehicle.
Meanwhile, details are beginning to emerge about the suspect who was shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
As a high school senior, Crooks donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a Democratic political action committee, but registered to vote as a Republican eight months later.
Former classmates described Crooks as a smart, quiet student, and one former classmate told Reuters he had no particular interest in politics during his high school years, instead spending his time discussing computers and games.
“He was so smart. He was such a smart kid, such a good student, I was really surprised,” the classmate told Reuters. “There was never a single funny thing that came up in any conversation.”
Another young man who identified himself as a former classmate of Crooks at Bethel Park High School told reporters on Sunday that his former classmate was “bullied almost every day” at the school.
The president, who was at a church in Delaware at the time of the shooting, cut short his weekend plans to return to Washington, arriving at the White House just after midnight to address the incident. He and Trump met later Saturday.
Biden delivered a short speech from the White House early Sunday morning, receiving a briefing on the investigation in the Situation Room and then delivering a similar message from the Roosevelt Room.
In those comments, Biden urged the public to “not speculate” about the shooter’s motives or affiliations as conspiracy theories and misinformation swirl online.
The Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee on Monday, where Trump is expected to receive a hero’s welcome from a shaken but defiant party membership. Trump, who arrived in Milwaukee on Sunday evening, is not scheduled to address the convention until Thursday evening after being formally nominated as the party’s candidate.
The president’s comments came at a delicate moment in an election rematch between Biden and Trump that has already been marked by unusual turmoil and deep political polarization.
The president has for weeks been battling calls from elected officials in his own party to abandon his reelection campaign after a disastrous performance in last month’s debate that highlighted concerns about his age and fitness to serve. Biden, 81, has insisted he cannot be ruled out as the party’s nominee, but that has done little to quell swirls of doubt that he is the best candidate to beat Trump in November’s election.
Trump, who earlier this year became the first former president to be convicted of a felony, is facing several legal challenges related to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol and his efforts to overturn the results of an election that he lost. At least one Republican senator, Mike Lee of Utah, has filed a lawsuit against him. I was asked Criminal charges against Trump will be dropped in light of the assassination attempt.
In his remarks Sunday night, Biden was realistic about the difficulty of getting people to listen to his words, acknowledging that national unity is the “most elusive goal” in a America deeply divided along camps. Republicans had already blamed the president for the violence and argued that Biden’s efforts to portray Trump as a threat to American democracy had fostered a toxic political environment.
But the attack has been condemned by Republican and Democratic officials across the country, as well as world leaders.
‘We need to turn down the temperature’: House Speaker Mike Johnson Said He spoke in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
The president acknowledged that his vision and Trump’s vision are deeply conflicting and that his supporters are deeply divided. In Milwaukee, the president said Republicans would roundly criticize Biden’s record, but he also plans to travel to Nevada on Monday to rally supporters around his policies. Because of the attack, he postponed a trip to Texas, where he was scheduled to speak at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library for the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
“We will debate and we will disagree. We will compare and contrast the candidates’ characters, their records, the issues, the policies and their vision for America,” he said, arguing that the fight should be decided “with the ballot box, not with bullets.”
After Saturday night’s attack, the Biden campaign Reportedly The company said it would remove its television advertising “as soon as possible” and take steps to suspend all “outbound communications.”
“Politics must never become a literal battlefield or, pray to God, a literal killing field,” Biden stressed in a speech Sunday night, as he urged Americans to move beyond “silos” and echo chambers where misinformation thrives.
“Remember, even if we disagree, we are not enemies,” he said.
