WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden He said on Monday (July 16) that he made a mistake when he told his supporters to put up a rival Donald Trump in a “target” in an effort to focus attention on his rival’s behavior, but said Trump regularly employed rhetoric that was incendiary.
“It was a mistake to use that word,” Biden said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. “I meant to say that you need to focus on it, focus on what you’re doing.”
On July 8, Biden, 81, spoke to some of his top donors and said they needed to shift the focus of the campaign from him and his poor debate performance to former President Trump, the Republican nominee in the Nov. 5 election.
“I have one job and that is to defeat Donald Trump… We’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump on the spot,” he said.
Some Republicans focused on that comment, blaming Biden for creating a climate that sparked the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Biden has repeatedly denounced political violence.
The president has endured more than two weeks of questions about his political future, so far facing calls to drop out as the Democratic presidential candidate after his poor showing against Trump in the June 27 debate sparked a crisis within his party.
He reiterated in the interview that he was not giving up on the race, although he acknowledged that people’s questions about his age were legitimate.
Biden also weighed in on Trump’s choice of Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate.
