United States President Joe Biden and his Republican challenger Donald Trump have called on Americans to put aside political divisions and come together after Trump narrowly survived an attempted assassination.
In a six-and-a-half-minute address from the Oval Office on Sunday night, Biden said political violence could not be normalised and that all Americans have a responsibility to “cool it down” when it comes to heated political rhetoric.
“We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America. We’ve travelled it before throughout our history,” Biden said. “Violence is never the answer.”
Acknowledging the sharp differences between Democrats and Republicans, Biden said he would continue to articulate his vision for the country ahead of November’s presidential election but that political disagreements must always be settled at the ballot box.
“Disagreement is inevitable in American democracy. It’s part of human nature. But politics must never be a literal battlefield, or, God forbid, a killing field,” he said.
Biden’s primetime address came as the US absorbed the ramifications of the first attempted assassination to wound a current or former president since the shooting of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Trump was left with a bloodied face after a gunman on Saturday opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, striking the former president in the ear.
Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief, was killed and several others were injured in the attack.
Investigators are still looking into the motives of the suspected shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who was shot dead by authorities shortly after he opened fire on the rally.
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