Urging people not to make assumptions about the shooter’s motives, Biden added, “We’ll debate and we’ll disagree — that’s not going to change. But we are not going to lose sight of who we are as Americans.”
The brief remarks were part of a delicate effort to mount an appropriate response in the wake of the shooting Saturday at Trump’s campaign rally, which injured the presumptive Republican nominee and left one person dead. The incident has upended an already tumultuous presidential race in which Biden was facing calls from other Democrats to pull out following a stumbling debate performance.
Biden spoke Sunday afternoon from the White House Roosevelt Room after receiving a briefing from top law enforcement and homeland security officials. He said he had instructed the Secret Service to conduct a review of the security measures at the rally, where a gunman fired at Trump from a nearby building, and to reexamine the safety protocols for the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee.
Biden’s appearance underscored his dual role as a president who has warned about political violence and a candidate running against a man targeted by that violence. The reverberations of Saturday’s shooting, likely to be long-lasting and unpredictable, have already begun to reshape the contours of the 2024 race.
Biden has postponed a scheduled Monday trip to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin. Harris delayed a trip to Florida to talk about abortion rights. The Biden-Harris campaign halted a $50 million ad blitz. And Biden’s team strategized privately on Sunday about how to move forward in the face of an event that occurred at a time when the president was already under pressure to stabilize his candidacy.
The shooting unfolded just as Biden was attempting to focus his campaign even more sharply on criticizing Trump, including for his intemperate rhetoric and divisive message, as an effort to move the conversation beyond his performance in the June 27 presidential debate.
Some outside Democrats said it was important to keep highlighting the contrast with Trump, while also showing sensitivity and compassion. They noted that Trump is set to receive his party’s presidential nomination during the Republican convention.
“This should not keep us from having frank conversations, even partisan conversations, about where we are on the issue contrasts,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist, who praised both Biden and Trump for measured responses in the hours after the shooting. “We should not feel compelled to bite our tongues in terms of bringing that contrast. We can absolutely bring that contrast without pouring gasoline on the fire of violent political rhetoric.”
In brief remarks to the media Saturday after the shooting, Biden denounced the attack and sought to make a broader case against political violence, echoing a message that has been central to his presidency. Biden has previously said he decided to run for president after a deadly 2017 riot by white supremacists in Charlottesville, and he has repeatedly cited the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol during speeches defending democracy.
“Look, there’s no place in America for this kind of violence,” Biden said Saturday evening after the shooting. “It’s sick. It’s sick. It’s one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this.”
On his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote Sunday that “it is more important than ever that we stand United and show our True Character as Americans.”
The two men spoke by phone Saturday after the shooting, in which Trump said a bullet pierced his right ear. The call was “good, short and respectful,” said one White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
Biden cut short his weekend stay in Rehoboth Beach, Del., to return to the White House on Saturday and his schedule for the coming days remains in flux. Harris’s canceled trip would have taken her to Trump’s home turf in Palm Beach County, Fla., where she planned to focus on Republicans’ efforts to curtail abortion rights. Biden had planned to visit the Johnson library to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Aides said the events would be postponed in light of the shooting.
Biden will move ahead with his planned interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday, MSNBC reported Sunday. Originally planned to take place at the Johnson library in Austin, the interview will now take place at the White House and air during prime time.
The shooting came at a pivotal moment in the 2024 presidential race, with Biden continuing to reel from his debate performance and rebuffing calls to drop out of the race from Democrats concerned about his precarious standing against Trump. After conceding that he had failed to challenge Trump sufficiently at the debate, Biden in recent days has sought to save his candidacy by pledging to make a more aggressive case against Trump going forward.
But in the wake of the shooting, the Biden campaign largely went dark, limiting public commentary and working to halt a $50 million July ad blitz. The ads, which had included spots attacking Trump over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, were aimed at cutting into the former president’s polling advantage by shifting the focus from Biden to his opponent.
“The Biden campaign is pausing all outbound communications and working to pull down our television ads as quickly as possible,” a Biden campaign official said Saturday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
As dozens of lawmakers, commentators and celebrities have called for Biden to end his candidacy over the past two weeks, his campaign has struggled to combat questions about Biden’s age and mental acuity.
The frenzy had appeared to be receding after Biden held an hour-long news conference Thursday and a raucous rally Friday in which he defiantly declared he would not step aside and amped up his rhetoric against Trump. Some Democrats have suggested that Saturday’s shooting would further quiet discussion of Biden stepping aside, as political leaders of all stripes face pressure to lower the temperature on their rhetoric.
At Friday’s rally, Biden seized on Trump’s criminal conviction, the accusations of sexual assault and rape against him and the far-right Project 2025 agenda being pushed by the former president’s allies.
He went on to call Trump “a threat to this nation,” highlighting the Capitol insurrection and other acts of political violence he suggested were inspired by the former president.
Republicans have seized on Biden’s messaging in the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting, some asserting without evidence that the president bore responsibility for the incident. Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio), a potential Trump running mate, was one of several GOP leaders who tried to draw a link between Democrats’ rhetoric and the shooter’s actions Saturday.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote on social media after the shooting. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
The shooter’s motives have not been established and remain under investigation.
Trump’s own rhetoric has often been far more explicit. He has amplified posts on social media calling for military tribunals of his enemies and depicted Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck. He has accused Biden of running a “Gestapo administration” and warned that his own criminal indictment would lead to “potential death and destruction.” He has advocated for shoplifters to be shot, encouraged protesters to be punched and pledged to pardon those convicted of violently storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Still, the shooting attempt at least temporarily complicates Biden’s stated plans to take the fight to Trump more directly. Images of Trump’s raised fist and bloodied face have ricocheted across the internet as his supporters — and even some of his critics — have lauded him for his defiant response to the shooting.
In recent private calls with donors and lawmakers before the shooting, Biden promised he would be more aggressive in public. On a call with donors on Monday, when asked what he would do differently in the next debate with Trump, Biden said, “attack, attack, attack, attack.”
In the same call, the president said he was done talking about his politically damaging debate performance. “It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s eye,” he said. “He’s gotten away with doing nothing for the last 10 days except ride around in his golf cart, bragging about scores he didn’t score.”
In the aftermath of the shooting, Republicans quickly seized on the comment.
Campaign aides said Biden’s comments referred to a desire to put a harsher spotlight on Trump and Project 2025, an agenda crafted by Trump’s allies that would dramatically reshape the federal government, and were in no way a call for violence.
One of Project 2025’s own leaders floated the prospect of political violence earlier this month.
“We are in the process of the second American revolution,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts warned recently, adding that it “will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.”
Biden’s allies sought to amplify the comment at the time, drawing on themes that have been a central part of the president’s pitch for the past five years.
In 2019, Biden launched his campaign for the presidency with a video warning that America’s values were under threat because of Trump’s presidency, citing especially the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. The Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol further animated Biden and his warnings about the dangers of political extremism and violence.
In announcing his reelection campaign, Biden released a video that opened with shots of the insurrection and warned “MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms.”
“When I ran for president four years ago, I said, ‘We’re in a battle for the soul of America,’” he said. “And we still are.”
