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In a prime-time national address from the Oval Office, Biden said political passions can run high but \u201cwe must never descend into violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no place in America for this kind of violence \u2014 for any violence. Ever. Period. No exception. We can\u2019t allow this violence to be normalized,\u201d Biden said.<\/p>\n
Biden spoke for about five minutes from the Oval Office. He noted that the\u00a0Republican National Convention<\/a>\u00a0was opening in Milwaukee on Monday, while he himself would be traveling the country to campaign for reelection.<\/p>\n He said passions would run high on both sides and the stakes of the election were enormous.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can do this,\u201d Biden implored, saying the nation was founded on a democracy that gave reason and balance a chance to prevail over brute force. \u201cAmerican democracy \u2014 where arguments are made in good faith. American democracy \u2014 where the rule of law is respected. Where decency, dignity, fair play aren\u2019t just quaint notions, they\u2019re living, breathing realities.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier Sunday, Biden condemned the attempted assassination of his predecessor,\u00a0Trump<\/a>, as \u201ccontrary to everything we stand for as a nation\u201d and said he was ordering an independent security review of how such an attack could have happened.<\/p>\n He called for the country to \u201cunite as one nation,\u201d promised a \u201cthorough and swift\u201d review and asked the public not to \u201cmake assumptions\u201d about the shooter\u2019s motives or affiliations.<\/p>\n The president said he has also directed the U.S. Secret Service to review all security measures for the RNC. Hours later, Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, the Secret Service\u2019s coordinator for the convention, said the weekend attack against Trump did not prompt any changes to the agency\u2019s security plan for the event and officials \u201care fully prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n In his remarks, Biden called the attack on Trump \u201cnot who we are as a nation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not American. And we cannot allow this to happen,\u201d he said. \u201cUnity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n The president said he and first lady Jill Biden were praying for the family of\u00a0Corey Comperatore<\/a>, a former fire chief who was shot and killed during the Trump rally Saturday night in Butler, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was protecting his family from the bullets,\u201d Biden said. \u201cGod love him.\u201d<\/p>\n The president also said he\u2019d had a \u201cshort but good conversation\u201d with Trump in the hours after the shootings and said he was \u201csincerely grateful\u201d that the former president is \u201cdoing well and recovering.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump, who has called for national resilience since the shooting, posted on his social media account after Biden\u2019s remarks, \u201cUNITE AMERICA!\u201d<\/p>\n Actually achieving unity will be far more challenging, especially in the midst of a bitter presidential campaign. Biden\u2019s team is grappling with how to calibrate the path forward after the weekend attack on the very person he is trying to defeat in\u00a0November\u2019s election<\/a>.<\/p>\n Biden, who has set out to brand Trump as a\u00a0dire threat to democracy<\/a>\u00a0and the nation\u2019s very founding principles, put a temporary pause on such political messaging. Shortly after Saturday night\u2019s attack, Biden\u2019s reelection campaign froze \u201call outbound communications\u201d and was working to pull down its television ads.<\/p>\n The president also postponed a planned trip to Texas on Monday, where he was to speak on 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 occur at the White House, instead of in Texas, as initially planned.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s campaign said that, after the NBC interview airs on Monday night, it and the Democratic National Committee \u201cwill continue drawing the contrast\u201d with Trump over the course of the GOP convention \u2014 even though it remains unclear when ads would resume.<\/p>\n Biden also still plans to make a planned trip to Las Vegas, which will include a campaign event Wednesday. Vice President\u00a0Kamala Harris<\/a>\u00a0postponed her planned campaign trip to Florida on Tuesday, where she had been set to meet with Republican women.<\/p>\n Trump, meanwhile, announced he was moving up plans to go to Milwaukee and the Republican convention, where criticism of Biden and the Democrats is sure to be searing.<\/p>\n The weekend developments were only the latest upheaval in a\u00a0campaign that has been extraordinarily topsy-turvy in recent weeks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s\u00a0shaky debate performance<\/a>\u00a0on June 27 so spooked his own party that some top surrogates and donors turned on him, and\u00a0nearly 20 Democratic members of Congress<\/a>\u00a0called on the president to leave the race outright. Facing mounting questions about whether he was fit for a second term, Biden and his top advisers have been scrambling to salvage his campaign by\u00a0adding events<\/a>\u00a0around the country and more aggressively criticizing Trump.<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s attack upended \u2014 at least for now \u2014 that counteroffensive on the cusp of the Republican convention.<\/p>\n The campaign also hopes that Sunday\u2019s Oval Office address lets Biden further drive home his point about unity while demonstrating leadership that could assuage nervous critics within his own party.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll debate and we\u2019ll disagree, that\u2019s not going to change,\u201d Biden said in his afternoon remarks. \u201cBut we\u2019ll not lose sight of who we are as Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n Although investigators are still in the early stages of determining what occurred and why, some Biden critics are calling out the president for telling donors in a private call Monday that \u201cit\u2019s time to put Trump in the bullseye.\u201d<\/p>\n A person familiar with those remarks said the president was trying to make the point that Trump had gotten away with a light public schedule after last month\u2019s debate while the president himself faced intense scrutiny. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to more freely discuss private conversations.<\/p>\n In the donor call, Biden said: \u201cI have one job and that\u2019s to beat Donald Trump. \u2026 I\u2019m absolutely certain I\u2019m the best person to be able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cSo, we\u2019re done talking about the debate. It\u2019s time to put Trump in the bullseye. He\u2019s gotten away with doing nothing for the last 10 days except ride around in his golf cart, bragging about scores he didn\u2019t score. \u2026 Anyway I won\u2019t get into his golf game.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n