President Joe Biden had just begun to turn the tide in his reelection bid, but the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump has cost him his most powerful tool: drawing attention to his opponent’s actions and the policies he plans for a second term.
Plagued by doubts about his mental health and pressure to step down, Biden fired back with an energetic speech in Detroit on Friday, vowing to “shine the spotlight” on Trump — a claim he intended to hold until Election Day in November.
Nearly 24 hours later, shots rang out at a Trump rally about 200 miles away in Butler, Pennsylvania, a chilling culmination of an era in American politics marked by extreme opinions and heated rhetoric.
Biden’s embattled campaign now has limited ways to move forward, with outbursts of political violence hampering efforts to make his case and threatening to undermine a core premise of his presidency: restoring decency and normalcy to national politics.
Instead, the president will hope that a message of unity in a time of crisis will resonate with voters. Biden has announced that he will deliver a rare speech from the Oval Office at 8 p.m. local time. Campaign officials said Biden will call on Americans to come together to end political violence.
“There is no room in America for this kind of violence,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Sunday. “Unity is the hardest goal to achieve, but nothing is more important right now.”
The increased attention on the assassination attempt has given Biden a chance to take a breather from a debate that has dominated headlines for weeks: whether he should withdraw after his disastrous debate defeat. One Democratic donor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he previously believed replacing Biden would be best for the party but that doing so now would certainly be disruptive.
The shooting, and Trump’s iconic reaction of raising his bloody fist, is sure to rally voters and donors behind the Republican candidate.
Business leaders Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, who had previously opposed endorsing the former president, publicly supported Trump within minutes of his attack.
Polls assessing the aftermath of the incident will likely take days or weeks to be released, but former President Ronald Reagan saw a big surge in his approval ratings after he was shot and wounded in 1981. Many presidential historians say the incident cemented Reagan’s place in the conservative movement.
Biden, by contrast, must balance how to move forward without appearing insensitive.
The president will reiterate his condemnation of violence in politics in a prime-time interview with NBC News on Monday, after which the campaign will return to focusing on the contrast between Biden’s and Trump’s visions, according to a campaign official. Biden has no plans to shy away from talking about the importance of the election, and the campaign believes the tragedy in Pennsylvania reinforces a central theme of the campaign, the official added.
The president on Sunday offered his sympathies to Trump and vowed a “thorough and swift” federal investigation, a review of security measures by the Secret Service and an independent review of the shooting that he promised would be made public to the American people.
Biden urged the public not to “speculate” about the shooter’s “motives or affiliations” and implored the public to “let the FBI and its partners do their job.”
With less than four months until Election Day, Biden needs to turn things around. He’s trailing Trump by nearly 3 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Officials from both parties have called on leaders to heal the nation’s divisions rather than get bogged down in political infighting. The shootings confirmed concerns in a May Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll that half of voters in battleground states said they were concerned about election violence.
Already the president’s campaign has said it is pausing messaging and television ads. Biden postponed a speech he had planned for Monday in Austin to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. The campaign canceled a Monday event in Milwaukee that was meant to rival the Republican National Convention. Vice President Kamala Harris has postponed a political trip to Florida originally scheduled for Tuesday, campaign officials said.
Biden doesn’t plan to be off the road for long: The White House said he plans to travel to Las Vegas on Tuesday and Wednesday to speak to Black and Latino advocacy groups and do another interview with BET.
Republican criticism
Law enforcement and Trump himself have not revealed the shooter’s motive, but some Republican lawmakers have already made unfounded claims that President Biden motivated the would-be assassin.
“The Biden campaign’s central argument is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a possible vice presidential running mate for Trump, posted on X. “This statement directly led to the assassination attempt on President Trump.”
The president’s supporters pointed to his calls for unity after the shooting, and Biden said he had a “brief but meaningful” call with Trump.
Biden campaign officials denounced criticism from Republican lawmakers and said politicizing the tragedy was an unacceptable abdication of leadership.
Still, the assassination attempt has tilted the tide of the election in Trump’s favor.
It’s a remarkable twist of fate for Trump, who has glorified violence throughout his political career, from encouraging attendees at a 2016 rally to “fuck the hell out” of protesters to urging his supporters to “fight like hell” before storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“It would be insufficient and meaningless for Biden to today ritually condemn political violence (if it were to occur),” posted Vivek Ramaswami, who ran against Trump in the 2024 Republican primary.
A rebellious image
Republican pollster Frank Luntz said the shooting guarantees that “everyone who voted for Trump is actually going to vote,” but that Biden can’t count on that certainty. The biggest impact, he said, will likely be in Pennsylvania, a must-win battleground state for Biden, because that’s where the shooting happened.
“The long and winding road for Joe Biden just got even longer and more winding,” Luntz posted on X. “The shooting of Donald Trump will have profound consequences in ways the shooter never intended.”
With Trump dominating the national debate, there is little Biden can do in the short term to advance an anti-Trump message, heal Democratic Party divisions or change the dynamics of the race in a way that reassures skeptics.
“This should give Donald Trump an edge among independents, at least for a while,” said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “A picture of Donald Trump with a bloodied, pumped fist and defiance is going to be more effective than any publicity money can buy.”
But others have warned about exaggerating the impact of this moment, pointing out that the polls have shown little change even after other big events, such as Biden’s disastrous debate defeat and Trump’s conviction in New York’s hush-money trial.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading progressive voice, expressed confidence in Biden’s chances of winning as long as he stays focused on his second-term plans to strengthen Social Security, lower drug prices and expand worker rights.
“If he keeps talking about it, I think he’ll get re-elected,” Sanders said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
