President Joe Biden walked back previous remarks stating that he should put former President Donald Trump in the "bullseye," Breitbart reported. Biden wants to distance himself from inflammatory remarks now that there was an assassination attempt on Trump.
The assassination attempt against Trump Saturday turned the political world upside down. After years of harsh rhetoric that included strong language against Trump, Democrats attempted to back peddle, including Biden.
NBC Nightly News host Lester Holt pressed Biden Monday on his use of such strong rhetoric. Biden ultimately admitted that it "was a mistake" to use the metaphoric language and said he instead "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 usually gets a pass from the media, but Holt was not about to let Biden off the hook as many are linking Biden's rhetoric to the shooting. "Well, let’s talk about the conversation this has started, and it’s really about language, what we say out loud, and the consequences of those," Holt began.
"You called your opponent an existential threat on a call a week ago, you said it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye. There’s some dispute about the context. But I think you appreciate –," Holt said before Biden cut him off.
"I didn’t say crosshairs. I was talking about focus on — look, the truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was, there was very little focus on Trump’s agenda," Biden claimed.
"Yeah, the term was bullseye," Holt shot back. Biden continued, "It was a mistake to use the word — I didn’t say crosshairs. I meant bullseye," the president said. "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.
"Focus — there’s a whole range of things that— look, I’m not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one. I’m not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election," Biden claimed. "I’m not the guy who said that I wasn’t going to accept the outcome of this election automatically. You can’t only love your country when you win. And so, the focus was on what he’s saying."
As reported in Politico, Biden decried that political discourse has become "very heated" and that it's time to "cool it down" in the immediate aftermath of the attempt on Trump's life that killed a bystander and wounded two others. However, he ignored his own history of hate.
One of the most notorious came in a screed in September 2022 in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, lit up in blood red. "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," Biden said at the time.
"MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country," he continued.
"They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots. And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections," the president claimed.
The left has been making hysterical predictions about Trump's authoritarian bent since before he was elected in 2016. After years of convincing leftists that they should be afraid of him and his supporters, they now want downplay the very incendiary rhetoric that got us here.
