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Biden, the ‘unifier in chief,’ admits he was wrong to call Trump ‘bullseye’, then says he never used inflammatory rhetoric

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“Isn’t something said just because it might incite someone?” Biden asks after calling for unity following Trump’s assassination attempt

Joe Biden speaks with NBC’s Lester Holt (NBC News)

President Joe Biden, who called for unity in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, said Monday that his call to put Trump “on target” was a “mistake.” Moments later, he insisted he had not used incendiary rhetoric against Trump.

In an interview With NBC’s Lester Holt, Biden spoke at length about Saturday’s assassination attempt, in which 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump in the ear as he spoke at a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania. Holt asked Biden about his Statements to donors last week that Trump represents an “existential threat” to the country and should be “targeted.”

“It was a mistake to use that word,” Biden said. “I didn’t use ‘crosshair,’ I meant ‘bull’s-eye.’ I meant focus on him, focus on what he was doing, focus on his policies, focus on the number of lies he told in the debate.”

But Biden did not apologize for his comments. And when asked if he had done any “soul searching” about comments that “might incite people who are not balanced,” Biden replied: “Look, I have not used that rhetoric. My opponent has.” He also called Trump a threat to democracy and argued that incitement is no reason to refrain from saying so.

“How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when (Trump) says things like he does?” Biden asked. “Do you stop saying something simply because it might incite someone?”

Biden’s defiant comments were a far cry from the call for national unity that the octogenarian leader issued in a rare Oval Office address on Sunday. “We should not go down this path in America. The political rhetoric in this country has become very heated,” Biden said. “It’s time to cool it down.” His comments in the wake of Saturday’s shooting prompted mainstream media outlets such as Political to Call Biden the nation’s “unifier-in-chief.”

In his interview with Holt, however, Biden embraced that “heated” rhetoric. In addition to his claim that Trump is a “threat to democracy,” Biden veered into a tirade about the “cruelty” of rural Trump supporters after Holt asked him if Saturday’s assassination attempt will alter the trajectory of the presidential election.

“I’ve never seen circumstances where you go around certain rural areas of the country and people are carrying signs, big Trump signs with a sign in the middle that says ‘F Biden’ and a little kid standing there holding up his middle finger,” Biden said. “It’s the kind of thing that’s provocative and kind of cruel. It’s a very different thing to say, ‘Look, I really don’t agree with the way Trump is handling taxes.'”

The interview touched on other topics, including Biden’s disastrous performance in last month’s debate and growing calls for him to drop out of the race over concerns about his mental state. Biden showed glimpses of those mental lapses during the interview.

Asked if he had spoken to former President Barack Obama since the debate, Biden said, “I may have, but I don’t think so.” At another point, Biden said he had “heard” from Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, whom he referred to as “he.” Biden has appointed Cheatle, a woman, in 2022.

Still, Biden called his debate performance a temporary blip. He said he plans to show up for the second debate scheduled for September. “I had a really, really bad night. I wasn’t feeling well at all. I made a mistake,” Biden said.

Biden confronted Holt on several points about what the president insisted was the media’s failure to vet Trump. He said the media failed to fact-check dozens of falsehoods Trump told in the debate. When Holt pointed out that NBC and others have fact-checked Trump, Biden insisted: “No, they haven’t. No, they haven’t.”

“Sometimes, come and talk to me about what we should be discussing, OK?” Biden told Holt. “About the issues.”

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