Biden asks Americans to 'cool it down' after Trump shooting

Trump’s shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday “calls on all of us to take a step back”, Biden said

United States President Joe Biden used the formal setting of the White House Oval Office on Sunday (Jul 14) to ask Americans to lower the political temperature and remember they are neighbours after a would-be assassin wounded Republican rival Donald Trump.

Trump’s shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday “calls on all of us to take a step back”, Biden said, adding that thankfully Trump was not seriously injured.

“We can’t allow this violence to be normalised. The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down," he said. "We all have a responsibility to do this."

“In America we resolve our differences at the ballot box. Now that’s how we do it. At the ballot box. Not with bullets," Biden said in a speech that was about seven minutes long, and carried live by major news networks and the conservative channel Fox News.

He stressed that US politics "must never be a literal battlefield, or, God forbid, a killing field".

The 81-year-old Democrat said that both sides had a responsibility to ease the situation ahead of a deeply polarised election that would now be a "time of testing" for the country.