Biden, Trump stress unity after assassination attempt
Al Jazeera
Biden says ‘violence is never the answer’ as Trump says Republican convention a chance to bring country together.
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 that political violence cannot 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 future of 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.
