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President Joe Biden said it was a “mistake” to use the word “bull’s-eye” during a campaign call urging supporters to focus on Donald Trump’s agenda, as the former president’s allies seek to blame Biden’s remarks for the attempted assassination of Trump.
“The truth of the matter was, and I guess that’s what I was getting at at the time, there was very little attention to the Trump agenda,” Biden said in an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt on Monday.
Last week, before a gunman fired into a crowd and struck Trump in the ear at a campaign rally, Biden told supporters on a private call to divert attention from his poor performance in last month’s debate and instead “put Trump on target.”
“It was a mistake to use that word. I didn’t say ‘crosshair,’ I said ‘bullseye.’ Focus on what he’s doing. Focus on his policies. Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate,” Biden told Holt during an interview at the White House on Monday.
“I mean there’s a whole range of things… Look, I’m not the guy who said I wanted to be a dictator on day one,” he added. “I’m not the guy who refused to accept the outcome of the election. I’m not the guy who said I wouldn’t automatically accept the outcome of this election. You can’t love your country only when you win, so the focus was on what he was saying, and I mean, the idea…
Holt interrupted the president to ask if he had “done a little soul-searching about things you may have said that might incite people who are not balanced.”
“How can you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when the president says the things he says? Can you say nothing?” Biden replied.
The full interview with Holt is scheduled to air on NBC at 9 p.m. ET.
Critical objections to Trump’s platform were previously dismissed by his supporters as alarmist or fear-mongering, but his allies now appear to be blaming those statements for Saturday’s assassination attempt.
There is no evidence that the 20-year-old gunman fired an AR-15-style rifle because he felt compelled by Biden’s statements or the statements of other Democrats and media figures who have warned against a second Trump term.
Trump allies have also repeatedly dismissed warnings from law enforcement officials that Trump’s rhetoric has fueled credible threats of violence and that Trump-allied far-right extremism poses a threat to national security.
“I’m not making that kind of rhetoric,” Biden said Monday. “Now, my opponent is making that kind of rhetoric. He’s talking about there being a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses, he’s talking about pardoning … suspending the sentences of all those who were arrested and sentenced to prison for what happened at the Capitol.”
During a call with donors last week, Biden said he “won’t talk about the debate” after his disastrous performance against Trump on June 27 prompted prominent Democrats to call for him to publicly end his reelection campaign. Biden has insisted he will remain in the race.
“We have to move forward. Look, we’re about 40 days from the convention and 120 days from the election. We can’t waste any more time distracting ourselves,” Biden said on the private call, according to Politico.
“I have one job, and that is to defeat Donald Trump,” he added. “I am absolutely certain that I am the best person to do it. So, we are done talking about the debate, it is time to put Trump on the spot.”
