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‘Politics should never be a killing field’: Biden addresses the nation after Trump attack | US News

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President Joe Biden has stressed the need for divided Americans to come together as he addressed the nation, after Donald Trump was shot in an assassination attempt.

Mr Biden said “politics should never be a political battlefield or, God forbid, a killing field” as he spoke in a televised address from the Oval Office.

“We need to lower the temperature in our politics,” he added.

Former president Trump, 78, suffered a bullet wound to his ear in the shooting, which happened early on Saturday evening as he was giving a speech to supporters in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles (50 km) north of Pittsburgh.

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How Trump attack unfolded – all angles

“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions,” said Mr Biden in his address.

“We can’t allow this violence to be normalised. The political rhetoric of this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down.”

President Joe Biden addresses the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Sunday, July 14, 2024, about the assassination attempt of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
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Pic: AP

He said passions would run high on both sides and the stakes of the election were enormous.

“We can do this,” Mr Biden implored, saying the nation was founded on a democracy that gave reason and balance a chance to prevail over brute force.

“American democracy – where arguments are made in good faith. American democracy – where the rule of law is respected. Where decency, dignity, fair play aren’t just quaint notions, they’re living, breathing realities.”

Biden’s calls for unity may be hard to achieve in desperate race for White House

They save the Oval Office address for serious times – conflict, typically.

On both counts – serious and conflict – a president’s prime-time appearance seemed appropriate.

This was a Joe Biden presentation on the gravity of the current situation, eyeballing an American audience on attritional politics.

Phrases like “political battlefield” and “killing field” offered an extreme warning, the choice of language deliberately stark and arresting.

Read the rest of James’s analysis

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The Republican National Convention opens in Milwaukee on Monday, and Donald Trump’s plane was seen touching down for the four-day event earlier on Sunday.

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The former president said in a social media post he was going to delay his trip by two days because of the attempted assassination “but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else”.



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