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Joe Biden scales back his attacks on Donald Trump after shooting at rally

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Washington:

The assassination attempt on Donald Trump has forced Joe Biden’s campaign team to scale back its attacks for the time being. The US President admitted that it was wrong to “target” his rival.

But Biden largely defended his rhetoric calling his Republican predecessor a threat to democracy and signaled that he would not hold back on his criticism of the man he defeated in 2020.

When Biden urged Americans to “lower the temperature” in one of his rare Oval Office speeches on Sunday after Trump’s shooting, it seemed as if this could deprive him of his central line of attack.

Just last week, the 81-year-old tried to refocus his election campaign on his Republican rival after weeks of unrest in the Democratic Party over his age and health following a disastrous debate performance.

In light of the Trump attack, Biden told NBC on Monday that it was a “mistake” to say in a conference call with donors a week ago that it was “time to target Trump.”

The Democrat said he meant the party should “focus on what he is doing” rather than calling for him to resign after the debate.

Republicans in particular pointed to this pointed comment as they blame Biden himself for creating the political conditions that led a gunman to kill Trump – while ignoring their own candidate’s history of promoting violence.

But while Biden’s campaign team softened its language immediately after the shooting, Biden himself indicated that he would not hold back.

“How do you talk about the threat to democracy that is real when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say anything because it might incite someone?” he told NBC.

“I did not participate in this rhetoric. Now my opponent has used this rhetoric. He is talking about how there will be a bloodbath if he loses.”

He also criticized Trump for promising to pardon those involved in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump supporters and for joking that the husband of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked with a hammer.

“Change the calculation”

Facing repeated questions about Biden’s comment at a White House briefing, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it was “OK to talk about a person’s past, to talk about a person’s character.”

Although Biden canceled a trip to Texas on Monday, he is going ahead with his planned visit to the swing state of Nevada, drawing parallels to Trump’s convention appearances.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, political columnist Karen Tumulty wrote that there could be “hardly a worse time for Biden to re-evaluate his strategy against Trump.”

However, Trump’s shooting could help Biden in his fight for his own political survival.

“This obviously changes the calculations of those calling for Biden’s resignation,” Peter Loge, a political scientist at George Washington University, told AFP.

“It buys Biden some time.”

The Democrats’ outburst of anger over Biden’s age following the debate dominated the media for weeks, but with the shooting on Saturday, the revolt against his candidacy abruptly fell silent.

Biden also sought to strike a presidential tone regarding the shooting, responding quickly on Saturday and addressing the nation on Sunday in only his third Oval Office speech of his presidency.

But while the shooting could unite Democrats, it could also derail Biden’s re-election bid, as the president is already behind in most polls.

Iconic images of a bloodied Trump waving his fist after the shooting are already fueling Republican hopes that voters will support him even more strongly in November and give him a landslide victory.

However, Loge believes that the impact could be small because “many voters think Trump is too crazy and Biden is too old, and an assassination attempt won’t change that.”

He added that focusing on the shooting’s immediate impact on the election campaign was “the wrong question” and that it overlooks the broader need to address the threats and violence that plague U.S. politics.

“If we make political violence part of our election campaign strategy, we miss the point of political violence and ultimately normalize it,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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