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President Joe Biden forcefully condemned the assassination attempt of Donald Trump in a rare Oval Office address on Sunday evening, saying it was time to ‘lower the temperature’ of politics as the country heads into the final months until Election Day.
“I want to speak tonight about the need to lower the temperature in our politics and to remember, though we may disagree, we are not enemies,” Biden said speaking behind the Resolute Desk. “We are neighbors, friends, co-workers, citizens. Most importantly: we are fellow Americans.”
Biden’s words come after a shooter opened a fire on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which led Trump to bleed from the side of his head by his right ear. In addition, 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, was killed while he was trying to shield his fellow attendees.
“Corey was a husband, a father, a volunteer firefighter, a hero, sheltering his family from those bullets,” he said.
The shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by law enforcement. Biden said the shooting required Americans to take stock of the current political landscape.
“We stand for an America, not of extremism and fury, but of decency and grace,” he said.
Biden sought to tie the assassination attempt on the former president to a 2017 shooting at a practice for the Congressional Baseball Game that severely injured House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, the assault on the husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and the kidnapping attempt of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
“There’s no place in America this kind of violence, for any violence ever,” she said. “Period. No exceptions.”
Some Republicans have sought to tie Biden’s rhetoric about Trump to the shooting, arguing that it fanned the flames that led to the shooting, with one freshman Republican congressman saying Biden should be prosecuted for it.
