By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday he made a mistake when he told supporters to put rival Donald Trump in a “bullseye,” but said Trump regularly employed rhetoric that was inflammatory and lied repeatedly at their debate last month.
A day after urging Americans to lower the political temperature in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump, Biden renewed his criticism of Trump’s actions, from his role on Jan. 6, 2021 when his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, to his regular use of inflammatory and disparaging rhetoric.
“It was a mistake to use the word,” Biden said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, referring to the “bullseye” comment. “I meant focus on it, focus on what he’s doing … Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate.”
Pressed about his shaky debate performance on June 27 that threw his reelection hopes into doubt, Biden confronted Holt. “Where are you on this,” Biden said, leaning forward. “Why doesn’t the press talk about all the lies he told?”
On July 8, Biden, 81, spoke to some of his biggest donors and said they needed to shift the election campaign’s focus from him and his poor debate performance to Trump, the Republican nominee in the Nov. 5 election.
“I have one job and that’s to beat Donald Trump … We’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye,” he said.
Some Republicans zeroed in on that comment as they blamed Biden for creating a climate that sparked the assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Biden has repeatedly decried political violence.
The president has endured more than two weeks of questions about his political future, so far facing down calls to step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate after the debate sparked a crisis within his party. Trump repeated well-worn falsehoods during the debate, including that he won the last election. Biden beat Trump in 2020.
The president reiterated in the interview that he is not leaving the race, while acknowledging that people’s questions about his age were legitimate.
The president has sought to turn attention to his opponent, highlighting Trump’s falsehoods, his refusal to accept the 2020 election results and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Biden turned back to those themes repeatedly during the NBC interview.
“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 said.
He cited the former president’s comments about a bloodbath ensuing if he loses the 2024 election and making fun when former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked by an intruder with a hammer at their home.
“How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say anything because it may incite somebody?” Biden said. “I have not engaged in that rhetoric. Now … my opponent’s engaged in that rhetoric.”
The president said he would debate Trump again in September. He said he had not spoken to former President Barack Obama, for whom he served as vice president, in some two weeks. But he batted away the suggestion Obama and his wife, Michelle, could be more supportive of him amid the calls that he step aside.
“They’ve helped me from the beginning. This is my job to get this done,” Biden said.
The president, who is seeking to prove that he is fit to stand for reelection and govern for a second four-year term despite concerns about his age, noted that millions of people had voted for him to be the Democratic Party’s nominee.
“I listen to them,” he said.
Biden also weighed in on Trump’s selection of Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate.
Asked by Holt what Vance’s selection said about Trump’s values, Biden replied: “He’s going to surround himself with people who agree completely with him.”
Chuckling, Biden pointed out Vance made critical comments about Trump previously.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Eric Beech and Heather Timmons; Editing by Heather Timmons, Cynthia Osterman and Deepa Babington)
