Washington: An assassination attempt on Donald Trump has forced Joe Biden’s campaign to tone down its attacks for now, with the US president admitting he was wrong to say his rival should be put in a “bullseye”.
But Biden is more broadly defending his rhetoric describing his Republican predecessor as a threat to democracy, signaling he won’t hold back for long in criticizing the man he defeated in 2020.
When Biden called on Americans to “turn down the heat” in a rare Oval Office speech on Sunday after the Trump shooting, it appeared it might rob him of his main line of attack.
Just last week, the 81-year-old tried to steer his campaign back against his Republican rival, after weeks of turmoil in the Democratic Party over his age and health following a disastrous debate performance.
In light of Trump’s attack, Biden told NBC on Monday that it was a “mistake” to say in a call with donors a week ago that it was “time to target Trump.”
The Democrat said he meant the party should “focus on what it’s doing” instead of calling for him to leave after the debate.
Republicans have pointed to the comment in particular as they accuse Biden himself of creating the political conditions that led the shooter to try to kill Trump — ignoring their own candidate’s history of promoting violence.
But while Biden’s campaign softened its language in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Biden himself has indicated he won’t hold back.
“How do you talk about the threat to democracy that is real when the president says the things he says. You don’t say anything because it might upset somebody?” he told NBC.
“I didn’t address that rhetoric. Now my opponent has engaged in that rhetoric, talking about how there will be a bloodbath if he loses.”
He also criticized Trump for pledging to pardon those involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump supporters and for joking about former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband being attacked with a hammer.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who faced repeated questions about Biden’s comments at a White House briefing, said “it’s OK to talk to somebody’s record, to talk to somebody’s character.”
Despite canceling his trip to Texas on Monday, Biden is going ahead with a planned visit to the battleground state of Nevada and preparing a split screen of Trump’s convention appearances.
Political columnist Karen Tumulty wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post that “there could hardly be a worse moment when Biden would be forced to redraw his strategy against Trump.”
However, Trump’s firing could help Biden in his fight for his own political survival.
“It obviously changes the calculus for people calling for Biden to step down,” Peter Loge, a political scientist at George Washington University, told AFP.
“That will buy Biden some time.
The Democratic meltdown over Biden’s age that followed the debate dominated the airwaves for weeks, but Saturday’s shots fired the riot over his candidacy.
Biden also sought to attack the president’s tone over the shooting, issuing a swift response Saturday and addressing the nation Sunday in his third Oval Office address.
But if the shooting could unite Democrats, it could also destroy Biden’s re-election bid, with the president already trailing in most polls.
Iconic images of a bloodied Trump waving his fist after the shooting are already fueling Republican hopes that voters will continue to rally behind him in a landslide victory in November.
But Loge said it may have little effect because “a lot of voters see Trump as too crazy and Biden as too old, and an assassination attempt doesn’t change that.”
He added that focusing on the immediate impact of the shooting on the campaigns was “the wrong question” and missed the broader need to deal with the threats and violence that plague American politics. “If we make political violence part of a campaign strategy, we miss the point of political violence and end up kind of normalizing it,” he said.
