Trump Shooting: Biden Urges America to Lower Temperature
US President Joe Biden has condemned the assassination attempt on his predecessor Donald Trump in a primetime address from the White House, telling Americans that US politics must never be a “killing field.”
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was wounded in the ear after a gunman opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One person was killed, and two more were critically injured in the attack.
In the Oval Office address – just the third of his presidency – Mr Biden urged Americans to “take a step back” and warned that “political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated.”
“No matter how strong our convictions, we must never descend into violence,” Mr Biden said in remarks that lasted just under seven minutes.
His short but forceful address largely went off without a hitch, amid ongoing scrutiny following a number of high-profile verbal slips.
In his primetime address, the president called on Americans to come together and warned that increasing political polarisation meant November’s election would be “a time of testing.”
Mr Biden and Trump remain locked neck-and-neck in opinion polls ahead of the election.
Reuters/Shakirat Sadiq
