Following the assassination attempt on his Republican rival Donald Trump in western Pennsylvania, US President Joe Biden’s campaign team is desperately searching for a new strategy.
The campaign has refrained from attacking the former president for the time being.
Biden is scheduled to address the American public on Sunday afternoon following a briefing on the shooting at a Trump rally.
Within hours of Saturday’s shooting, Biden’s campaign pulled television ads and suspended other political communications, including those that referenced Trump’s conviction in May in a New York state court on charges that he paid hush money to a porn star to prevent a sex scandal before the 2016 U.S. election.
Instead of attacking Trump in the coming days, the White House and Biden campaign will point to the president’s history of condemning all forms of political violence, including his sharp criticism of the “disorder” created by campus protests against the Israel-Gaza conflict, said campaign officials who wished to remain anonymous.
Biden’s advisers had hoped to counter recent calls from some of his fellow Democrats and others that he should step down and let another candidate represent the party in the Nov. 5 election. To that end, they focused more on the threats they say Trump poses to U.S. democratic norms and reproductive rights, as well as Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.
“This changes everything,” one campaign official said of the assassination attempt.
“We’re still assessing that. It’s going to be a lot harder to impeach Trump and draw that split screen.”
“The president is trying to lower the temperature,” the official added.
Biden campaign officials said they expected the assassination attempt to ease pressure from Democrats in Congress on Biden, 81, to withdraw from the race amid concerns about his fitness for office.
Some Democrats in the House and Senate publicly called on Biden to withdraw from the candidacy after his shaky performance in a debate against Trump in June.
Biden’s trip planned for Monday to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas – where he was scheduled to speak about the landmark civil rights law Johnson signed in the 1960s and criticize Trump’s attacks on immigrants and American diversity – is under review and could be canceled, officials said.
Because the shooting occurred in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which Biden narrowly won over Trump in 2020, some political strategists say the incident could be particularly impactful because it could increase turnout among Republican voters sympathetic to Trump.
“This does not guarantee that Trump will flip Pennsylvania,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote on social media.
“But the long and winding road for Joe Biden just got longer and more winding. Just as what happened to George Floyd had a lasting impact on tens of millions of Americans, the shooting of Donald Trump will have significant consequences that the shooter never intended.”
Floyd is the black man who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020; the murder sparked protests in many US cities and abroad.
Other Democratic candidates running this year are also rethinking their plans and are now focusing on the dangers they believe Trump would pose if elected.
“The real question is whether we can go back in two weeks and declare Trump a threat to the country. That was our game plan, and it’s fair, but it’s unclear how much of a blow has been taken from us,” said a Democrat involved in a Senate race who spoke on condition of anonymity.
with AP