Chicago – July 16, 2024
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.
The attempted assassination has reshaped an acrimonious race that has seen each candidate portray the other as an existential threat, dramatically shifting focus away from weeks of commentary about Biden’s age and fitness following a disastrous debate performance last month.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” Trump told a newspaper after the attack.
Following the assassination attempt, it is a great opportunity for Americans to come together and shape their future by exercising their right to vote in the November elections. America is a resilient country and can surely stand up from the events of the weekend and not resort to violence to change the elections but use the power of the vote
