(IntegrityPress.org) – President Joe Biden delivered a public statement on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, in which he called such violence “inappropriate” and “sick”.
In an interview a day later, however, he was keen to defend his earlier use of rhetoric that some have criticized as inflammatory. Speaking just two days after Trump’s attempted assassination, Biden claimed that he had not “engaged in that rhetoric” but instead accused Trump of having done so in the past.
Biden’s defensive comments came after some pointed to his July 8 conversation with campaign donors in which he said that the time had come to “put Trump in the bullseye”. During his interview two days after the shooting, he admitted that he made a “mistake” in using the phrase but claimed that he meant that his team needed to focus on Trump and his policies. He argued that Trump presented a “threat to democracy” and added that it was impossible to censor himself completely even if others were concerned that his words might “incite somebody”.
On July 13, Donald Trump was speaking at a busy rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when 20-year-old Thomas Crooks scaled a building and fired several shots at him. Crooks, who used his father’s rifle, managed to shoot Trump through the ear, wounding but not killing him. He also shot three other people in the crowd, including 50-year-old Corey Comperatore.
Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter, dove in front of his wife and daughter when he heard gunshots. In doing so, he was shot in the head. Despite the efforts of both a nearby doctor in the crowd and first responders, he died from his injury. Crooks was quickly shot in the head and killed by law enforcement at the scene.
Trump, who was photographed raising his fist and telling the crowd to “fight” after being shot, later took to the Truth social media website to express his condolences to the Comperatore family, as well as the family of another spectator who had been seriously injured. Corey Comperatore’s widow, Helen, said that she rejected a phone call from Pres. Biden out of respect for her “devout Republican” husband’s views. She added that she did not harbour any ill feeling towards the Democrat president but placed the blame for her husband’s death on the “despicable” man who shot him.
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