Biden asks Americans to 'cool it down' after Trump shooting

U.S. President Joe Biden used the formal setting of the White House Oval Office on Sunday to ask Americans to lower the political temperature and remember they are neighbors after a would-be assassin wounded Republican rival Donald Trump.

Trump's shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday "calls on all of us to take a step back," Biden said. Thankfully, Trump was not seriously injured, he said.

"We can't allow this violence to be normalized. The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It's time to cool it down," he said. "We all have a responsibility to do this."

"In America we resolve our differences at the ballot box. Now that's how we do it. At the ballot box. Not with bullets," Biden said in a speech that was about seven minutes long, and carried live by major news networks and the conservative channel Fox News.

It was Biden's third use of the formal setting of the Oval Office to comment on issues of major importance to Americans since he took power in 2021. This time, it is less than four months before the November 5 election, and Biden's political future is in doubt.

Biden's appearance allowed him to demonstrate the power of incumbency, an important symbolic image as he battles some in his own Democratic Party who want the 81-year-old leader to step aside from seeking re-election out of concerns he lacks the mental acuity for another four-year term.

Biden ran through some of the U.S.'s multiple instances of political violence in recent years, including the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump loyalists and the hammer-beating injury of Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in 2022.

"Violence has never been the answer," Biden said.

Biden's Oval Office address was a rare one. Last October, he made a prime-time speech to comment on the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts, and in June 2023, he spoke when a deal was reached with Republicans to avoid a breach of the U.S. debt ceiling.

His campaign has called off verbal attacks on Trump to focus instead on the future. Within hours of Saturday's shooting, Biden's campaign was pulling down television ads and suspending other political communications.

In his remarks on Sunday, Trump also counseled calm and unity, aiming to lower temperatures in a country whose deep political divide has grown even more pronounced during the presidential race.

"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 the Washington Examiner, referring to a speech he will make when he accepts his party's formal nomination at the Republican National Convention.

"I want to try to unite our country," the New York Post reported Trump saying during the same interview, conducted during the flight to Milwaukee. "But I don't know if that's possible. People are very divided."