United States President Joe Biden and his Republican challenger Donald Trump have called on Americans to put aside political divisions and come together after Trump narrowly survived an attempted assassination.
In a six-and-a-half-minute address from the Oval Office on Sunday night, Biden said that political violence cannot be normalised and that all Americans have a responsibility to âcool it downâ when it comes to heated political rhetoric.
âWe cannot, we must not, go down this road in America. Weâve travelled it before throughout our history,â Biden said. âViolence is never the answer.â
Acknowledging the sharp differences between Democrats and Republicans, Biden said he would continue to articulate his vision for the future of the country ahead of Novemberâs presidential election but that political disagreements must always be settled at the ballot box.
âDisagreement is inevitable in American democracy. Itâs part of human nature. But politics must never be a literal battlefield, or, God forbid, a killing field,â he said.
Bidenâs primetime address came as the US absorbed the ramifications of the first attempted assassination to wound a current or former president since the shooting of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Trump was left with a bloodied face after a gunman on Saturday opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, striking 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, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who was shot dead by authorities shortly after he opened fire on the rally.
The FBI has said it believes that Crooks, who was registered as a Republican but also donated money to a Democratic-aligned political action committee, acted alone and that it has yet to identify any association with a particular ideology.
The attempted assassination has reshaped an acrimonious race that has seen each candidate portray the other as an existential threat, shifting focus away from weeks of commentary about Bidenâs age and fitness.
Biden, who has cast Trump as a serious danger to American democracy, temporarily suspended television ads and political messaging in the wake of the attack.
Earlier on Sunday, Biden told reporters at the White House that he had a âshort but good conversationâ with Trump in a phone call after the attack.
âJill and I are keeping him and his family in our prayers. We also extend 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,â Biden said.
Trump, who has accused Biden of threatening democracy and weaponising the justice system against him, on Sunday arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin ahead of the opening of the Republican National Convention, where he will be formally named the partyâs nominee later this week.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Sunday, Trump said that he would deliver a âwhole different speechâ at the convention than he had originally planned.
âThis is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it wouldâve been two days ago,â he told the newspaper.
Trump said earlier on his Truth Social platform that Americans should stand united and not let âevil to winâ, and that he had decided to attend the convention as planned as âI cannot allow a âshooter,â or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything elseâ.
In his address, Biden, who is trailing Trump in most polls, acknowledged that his record and policies would come under criticism at the convention and pledged to continue to make the case for democracy and âfor action at the ballot boxâ.
âWe debate and disagree, we compare and contrast the character of the candidates, the records, the issues, the agenda, the vision for America. But in America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box,â he said.
âThatâs how we do it, at the ballot box, not with bullets. The power to change America should always rest in the hands of the people, not in the hands of a would-be assassin.â
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