In his first campaign appearance since the assassination attempt on his Republican rival, President Joe Biden linked the attack on Donald Trump to U.S. racial and gun violence, imploring Americans to universally denounce it.
“We all have a responsibility to lower the temperature and condemn violence in any form,” he said to Black voters in Las Vegas, Nevada, Tuesday.
Speaking at the convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an American civil rights organization, Biden highlighted the violence perpetrated on African Americans, including George Floyd, who was killed by a white police officer in 2020.
For the first time since the shooting at Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign event on Saturday, which killed a rallygoer and wounded others, including the former president, Biden called for stricter gun control and to reenact the U.S. ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004.
“An AR-15 machine gun was used in the shooting of Donald Trump. Just as it was an assault weapon that killed so many others, including children,” he said. “It's time to outlaw them. I did it once, and I will do it again.”
With Black support crucial to secure his victory, Biden contrasted his policies with those of the former president on issues key to African Americans, mocking the term “Black jobs” that Trump often uses.
“I know what a Black job is. It’s the vice president of the United States,” he said, praising Vice President Kamala Harris, his running mate in the November election, who is Black and South Asian American.
He amplified his message in an interview with Black Entertainment Television on the same day. On Wednesday, he will address UnidosUS, the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, attempting to win Latino voters, another key voting bloc for the party.
Another layer of complication
For the president, whose weak debate performance last month triggered questions about his age and mental acuity, the assassination attempt of his rival adds an additional layer of complication, said William Howell, the Sydney Stein professor in American politics at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
Biden must allay concerns about his fitness for office while dealing with an opponent who is enjoying a moment of ascendance, Howell told VOA.
Trump, who was officially chosen as his party’s nominee at the Republican National Convention this week, is being held in the highest regard by Republicans, Howell added.
“Coming in not just as a hero, but somehow he's like he's anointed,” Howell said. “Like he was called upon by God himself to lead this party.”
At the same time, Biden in his role as president must lead calls for unity and denounce violence.
“To do all those three things simultaneously is extraordinarily difficult for anybody,” Howell said. “All the more difficult for a president who's not known for his great soaring rhetorical abilities, who has never enjoyed kind of passionate appeal within his own party.”
On Tuesday, Biden repeated calls to calm the country’s political rhetoric, a message he delivered three times in less than 24 hours following the attempt on Trump’s life.
However, “it doesn't mean we should stop telling the truth,” Biden said, signaling that he plans to continue his attacks against Trump on the campaign trail. His team had just begun to more sharply criticize the Republican nominee in an effort to stabilize Biden’s candidacy and declining poll numbers when the shooting occurred.
Currently, the president lags in the polls behind Trump nationally, and in various swing states, including Nevada. He continues to reject calls from at least 20 congressional Democrats and others within his party to step aside, insisting that he is the best-positioned Democrat to beat Trump.
Via his social media platform, Trump also urged the nation to “stand united.” He said in an interview with the Washington Examiner newspaper that he has rewritten his convention speech to focus more on unity.
“Everybody is talking about unity, even Donald Trump,” said Claire Finkelstein, director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. “Of course, his vision of unity is that the country should unify behind him,” she told VOA.
VOA’s Kim Lewis contributed to this story.
