Biden calls for “unity” after Trump assassination attempt and orders security review

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Sunday called on the country to “come together as one nation” after the assassination attempt of its predecessor, donald trumpand said it was ordering an independent security review into how such an attack could have happened.

Biden made brief remarks in the afternoon at the White House after receiving a briefing on the investigation in the Situation Room. He called for a “thorough and swift” review and asked the public not to “make assumptions” about the shooter’s motives or affiliations.

The president said he also instructed the U.S. Secret Service to review all security measures for the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee. Hours later, Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, the Secret Service coordinator for the convention, said the weekend attack on Trump had not prompted any changes to the agency’s security plan for the event and that authorities “are fully prepared.”

In his remarks, Biden said that “an assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation.”

“It’s not who we are as a nation. It’s not American. And we can’t allow that to happen,” he said. “Unity is the most difficult goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now.”

Biden planned to deliver extensive remarks to the nation Sunday night in an Oval Office address.

Meanwhile, the president said he and first lady Jill Biden were praying for the family of Corey Compatore, a former fire chief who was shot and killed during Trump’s rally Saturday night. in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“He was protecting his family from bullets,” Biden said. “God love him.”

The president also said he had a “short but good conversation” with Trump in the hours following the shooting and that he was “sincerely grateful” that the former president was “doing well and recovering.”

Trump, who has called for national resilience since the shooting, posted on his social media account after Biden’s remarks: “UNITE AMERICA!”

In fact, achieving unity will be much more difficult, especially in the midst of a bitter presidential campaign. Biden’s team is struggling to figure out how to calibrate the path forward after the weekend’s attack on the very person he is trying to defeat. November elections.

Biden, who decided to label Trump as a terrible threat to democracy and the nation’s own founding principles, have put a pause on these political messages, at least in the short term. Shortly after Saturday night’s attack, Biden’s reelection campaign said it was suspending “all outside communications and working to remove our television ads as quickly as possible” for an unspecified period of time.

The president also postponed a planned trip to Texas on Monday, where he was to speak at 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 take place at the White House rather than in Texas as initially planned.

But the White House said Biden will still have a planned trip to Las Vegas that will include a campaign event on Wednesday. vice president Kamala Harris Still, he postponed his planned campaign trip to Florida on Tuesday, where he was scheduled to meet Republican voters.

Meanwhile, Trump announced he was moving forward with plans to go to Milwaukee and would arrive later on Sunday at the Republican convention, where criticism of Biden and Democrats is sure to be scathing.

The weekend’s events were just the latest twist in a campaign that has been extraordinarily confusing in recent weeks.

Biden unstable debate performance on June 27 scared his own party so much that some of the top officials and donors turned against him, and nearly 20 Democratic members of Congress asked the president to drop out of the race immediately. Facing growing questions about whether he was fit for a second term, Biden and his top advisers have been fighting to save his campaign. adding events across the country and criticizing Trump more aggressively.

Saturday’s attack put paid to — at least briefly — that counteroffensive on the brink of the Republican convention.

The campaign hopes Sunday night’s speech will provide Biden with an opportunity to further reinforce his views on the need for unity, but also to demonstrate leadership that can appease nervous critics within his own party.

“We will debate and disagree, that’s not going to change,” Biden said in his afternoon remarks. “But we will not lose sight of who we are as Americans.”

While investigators are still in the early stages of determining what happened and why, some Biden critics criticize the president for telling donors in a private call on Monday that “it’s time to put Trump on target.”

A person familiar with those comments said the president was trying to make clear that Trump had achieved a light public agenda after last month’s debate while the president himself faced intense scrutiny. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations more freely.

On the donor call, Biden said: “I have one job and it is to beat Donald Trump… I am absolutely certain that I am the best person to be able to do that.”

He continued: “So we’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump on target. He hasn’t done anything in the last 10 days except ride around in his golf cart, bragging about scores he didn’t score… Anyway, I’m not going to get into his golf game.