WASHINGTON — Within an hour after the first shots were fired in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden had been briefed on what had unfolded, he was preparing a written statement condemning it and planning an address the nation, and he had tried to call his rival in the election.
Biden’s swift response Saturday to fast-moving developments is uncharacteristic for a White House that tends to react more slowly to crises than even some of its allies would like. The pace was designed to leave no question about how seriously Biden was taking the attempt to assassinate his political opponent and to set the tone for how he wants to be seen by the country as he navigates one of the most horrific moments in American history.
“This is a commander in chief moment,” a Biden aide said. “He wants to reduce the temperature.”
Biden’s quick response also left little time for an outside narrative about his handling of it to fill a void. He has staked out a position as a leader calling for unity amid a crisis — a familiar goal that has eluded him since he took office but was a central theme of his 2020 candidacy and inaugural address. He’s effectively leaving the question of whether the political temperature gets dialed up or down with Trump and his allies as they gather in Milwaukee this week for the Republican National Convention.
The Biden campaign still plans to resume criticizing Trump this week after a brief pause in political barbs following the shooting Saturday, which killed one attendee and injured two others in addition to Trump. The campaign and the Democratic National Committee will be focusing on contrasting Biden’s policies and vision for a second term with what a campaign official described as “Trump and Republicans’ backwards-looking agenda”
On Sunday night, Biden delivered an Oval Office address to the nation — only his third since taking office — about the attempted assassination attempt.
“Our politics must never be a literal battlefield, and God forbid, a killing field,” Biden said. “We stand for an America not of extremism and fury, but of decency and grace.”
And on Monday, the first night of the Republican convention, Biden will sit down with NBC News’ Lester Holt for an interview in which he plans to expand on his calls for an end to political violence, the campaign official said.
Biden’s quick series of decisions and appearances comes during one of the most consequential periods in any recent campaign for the White House.
“An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation. Everything,” Biden said Sunday in remarks from the Roosevelt Room in the White House. “Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now — unity.”
Biden was attending Mass in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Saturday evening when Trump was grazed by a gunman’s bullet at a rally in Pennsylvania. Once Biden left the service, he told his aides he wanted to speak on camera as soon as he was fully briefed on the incident, according to a person familiar with the decision-making.
As aides were scrambling to set up a space for him to deliver remarks, the Biden campaign announced it was pausing all outbound communication and working to pull down all television ads.
Biden also decided that he wanted to return to Washington so he could receive more comprehensive briefings from his top aides, a second person familiar with the matter said. That included a White House Situation Room meeting with the vice president, the attorney general and other homeland security and law enforcement officials Sunday morning.
Shortly after that, Biden aides decided to officially postpone his travel to Austin, Texas, on Monday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Right Act at Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential library. Biden will move forward with planned travel later this week for events in Nevada, the White House said Sunday.
Before the shooting, Biden’s main focus had been on trying to overcome growing calls from members of his own party for him to end his presidential campaign after an uneven performance in the debate against Trump on June 27.
He spent most of his Saturday focused on convincing skeptical Democratic lawmakers he was still their best option as their party’s nominee. Now, according to Biden advisers, he is training his attention on managing the government’s response to the attempted assassination of Trump, including a Secret Service review of all security measures for the Republican convention and an independent investigation of the security measures at Trump’s rally, to determine “exactly what happened.”
