US President Joe Biden has said that a statement he made in which he said it was necessary to put his opponent in the November election, Republican Donald Trump, “in the crosshairs” was a “mistake”.
Biden had made the comment in a phone conversation with campaign donors several days before the attack on Trump, according to the Politico website. On Saturday (13), Trump was injured in a shooting attack in which one person died and two others besides the former president were injured.
In an interview with NBC News that will be broadcast in full on Monday night (15), but excerpts of which have already been released, Biden stated that the mention of putting his rival in the “sights” was not a call for attacks to be committed against Trump.
“I meant, focus on him, focus on what he’s doing. Focus on his policies, focus on the number of lies he told in the debate,” Biden said, referring to the June 27 CNN debate.
“I’m not the guy who said, ‘I want to be a dictator from day one.’ I’m not the guy who refused to accept the results of the election. [de 2020]. I wasn’t the one who said I wouldn’t automatically accept the outcome of this election. You can’t just love your country when you win. And so the focus was on what he was saying,” the Democrat said.
Biden argued that his repeated accusations that Trump is a “threat to democracy” do not amount to violent rhetoric.
“How can you talk about a threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he does? You just don’t say anything, because that might incite someone.” [à violência]?”, asked the president.
“I don’t adopt that rhetoric [violenta]. Now, my opponent, yes: he talks about there being a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses, about how he’s going to pardon all the actions, I think suspend the sentences of all those who were arrested and sentenced to prison because of what happened at the Capitol. [a invasão de apoiadores de Trump, em janeiro de 2021]. I’m not out there making fun, like when, remember the picture of Donald Trump when Nancy Pelosi’s husband got hit with a gavel, talking – joking about it?” the Democrat said.
Biden referred to an attack that occurred on October 28, 2022, a week before the US midterm elections, when a man, David DePape, broke into the home of Pelosi, then the country’s speaker of the country’s House, in San Francisco and attacked Paul Pelosi, her husband, with a hammer before the police arrived, who arrested him.
DePape, who was sentenced in May to 30 years in prison for the incident in a federal trial, was searching for the Democratic congresswoman, who was in Washington on the day of the attack.
In June, he was also found guilty in a California state court; the sentence in that case has not yet been announced.
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