President Joe Biden forcefully condemned the assassination attempt of Donald Trump in a rare Oval Office address on Sunday evening, saying it was time to “lower the temperature” of politics as the country heads into the final months until Election Day.
“I want to speak tonight about the need to lower the temperature in our politics and to remember, though we may disagree, we are not enemies,” Biden said, speaking behind the Resolute Desk. “We are neighbors, friends, co-workers, citizens. Most importantly: we are fellow Americans.”
Biden spoke to the nation after a shooter opened a fire on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania shortly after 6pm on Saturday. Trump was injured but survived, and was rushed from the stage by security, bleeding from his right ear.
A rally-goer, 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, was killed while he was trying to shield fellow attendees.
Biden spoke of him by name during his address. “Corey was a husband, a father, a volunteer firefighter, a hero, sheltering his family from those bullets,” he said.
The shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by law enforcement. Biden said the shooting required Americans to take stock of the current political landscape.
“We stand for an America, not of extremism and fury, but of decency and grace,” he said.
Biden sought to link Trump’s assassination attempt with other recent violence in US politics: a shooting at a practice for the Congressional Baseball Game that severely injured House Majority Leader Steve Scalise; the riot at the US Capitol on January 6; the assault on the husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi; and the kidnapping attempt of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
“There’s no place in America this kind of violence, for any violence ever,” Biden said. “Period. No exceptions.”
Some Republicans have sought to tie Biden’s rhetoric about Trump to the shooting, arguing that the president’s words fanned the flames. One freshman Republican congressman said Biden should be prosecuted for it.
But Biden insisted that politics should not resort to violence.
“Disagreement is inevitable in American politics,” he said. “It’s part of human nature. Politics must never be a literal battlefield and God forbid a killing field.”
Biden’s speech comes as Trump and other members of his party head to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention this week. Biden said that he expected they would criticize his record at the convention.
“I’ll continue to speak out strongly for democracy, stand for our constitution, call for action at the ballot box, not violence on our streets,” Biden said.
The president’s words come as many Democrats continue to have anxieties about him staying at the top of the ticket in November after his poor debate performance against Trump in Atlanta last month.
Since then, Biden, who at 81 is the oldest person to occupy the Oval Office, has sought reassure fellow Democrats and voters that he’s fit to do the job. This included him holding a press conference at the close of the NATO summit on Thursday where he took multiple questions and discussed foreign policy, and holding campaign rallies.
Following Trump’s shooting, the president suspended campaign ads even as the election will be held in slightly more than 100 days and a month before Democrats hold their own convention in Chicago next month. Conversely, Trump’s campaign has began fundraising off the shooting.
Biden said that Americans needed to listen to people of other views and understand them.
“Here in America, we need to get out of our silos where we only listen to those with whom we agree, where misinformation is rampant, where foreign actors fan the flames of our division to shape the outcome consistent with their interests not ours,” he said.
“Nothing is more important for us now than standing together. We can do this.”