Kevin Rector | (TNS) Los Angeles Times

President Joe Biden said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday that it was a “mistake” to say prior to the weekend assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump that it was “time to put Trump in the bullseye.”

However, Biden said he only meant that the nation’s focus should be on Trump and the “threat to democracy” he represents. He also said Trump has repeatedly engaged in worse rhetoric — including by “making fun of” and “joking about” the violent attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul at their home in San Francisco in 2022.

“I didn’t say crosshairs. I was talking about focus on,” Biden said of his remark.

“Focus on what he’s doing, focus on his policies, focus on the number of lies he told at the debate. I mean, there’s a whole range of things,” Biden said. “Look, I’m not the guy who said I want to be a dictator on day one. I’m not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election.”

“You can’t only love your country when you win,” Biden said. “And so the focus was on what he’s saying.”

Holt asked Biden if he has done “a little soul-searching” about things he’d said that could “incite people who are not balanced.”

“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 might incite somebody?” Biden said.

“Look, I … have not engaged in that rhetoric. Now, my opponent has engaged in that rhetoric. He talks about there will be a bloodbath if he loses, talking about how he is going to forgive all those — actually, I guess suspend the sentences of — all those who were arrested and sentenced to go to jail because of what happened at the Capitol” on January 6.

He asked Holt if he remembered when Trump mocked the attack on Pelosi.

The interview was set to be aired in full Monday evening. Holt described it as the first in an “unscripted setting” since the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The interview drew some political attention back to Biden on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump formally received the party’s nomination.

Biden previously spoke to the attack on Trump in remarks late Saturday, just hours after Trump was shot, when he said “everybody must condemn” political violence. On Sunday, he gave a prime-time national address from the Oval Office where he again condemned the violence and asked everyone, amid high passions, to “cool it down.”

His campaign has pulled down attack ads against Trump in the wake of the shooting. Still, critics on the right have latched onto previous campaign rhetoric denouncing Trump, including the “bullseye” comment, to suggest that Biden and Democrats more broadly were partially to blame for the shooting.

Monday’s interview, which was scheduled before the assassination attempt, also was Biden’s latest chance to project competence following his disastrous debate performance last month, which elevated concerns, including from within his own party, about his age and his ability to lead.

Biden is 81. Trump is 78.

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Biden has been under an intense microscope since the June 27 debate, where he repeatedly lost his train of thought and failed to challenge Trump’s talking points and falsehoods. He sounded hoarse and came out stiff, and the performance heightened existing concerns for many about his age.

Biden rebuffed calls for him to bow out in the days after, saying he may not be a “young man” anymore but still knew how to do the job well.

Biden gave an interview to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on July 5, where he dismissed his debate performance as a “bad episode” and rejected the idea that he had any serious health condition that would undermine his ability to do the job. He also rejected the idea of submitting to an independent medical evaluation, saying the job of the presidency presented him with a “cognitive test every single day” — which he said he is passing while also being out on the campaign trail.

On July 11, Biden held a nearly hour-long news conference where he answered a range of questions from the media, including around foreign policy. There, he sounded defiant and boasted of his track record getting legislation passed.

He called himself the “most qualified person to run for president,” and said he would defeat Trump in November. “I beat him once, and I will beat him again.”

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©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The apparent attempted assassination of former President and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was met with assertions that it underscores the need to extend Secret Service protection to independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy, a former Democratic presidential candidate turned third party, has been calling on the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security to grant him protection for sometime, citing threats to his campaign and his family’s history in American politics.

On Sunday, former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown said the apparent attempt on Trump’s life should serve as proof that, in the current political climate, Kennedy is also in danger.

“It’s time for Biden to approve security for Mr. Kennedy immediately,” Brown said via social media.

The former U.S. Senator was joined in his calls by the Catholic Action League, which said that the Kennedy family is at particular risk of political violence.

“Given this incident and the history of the Kennedy family, the Biden Administration must reverse its decision to deny Secret Service protection to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,” they wrote in a Sunday statement.

Kennedy is the son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who died at the hand of an assassin in 1968. His uncle, John F. Kennedy, was killed in Dallas five years earlier while serving as the 35th U.S. President. U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy received death threats for years and received protection more than a year before his participation in the 1980 presidential election.

In an email to supporters sent just days before shots were taken at Trump, the Kennedy campaign called the Biden decision to deny him coverage “appalling.”

“Especially when you know Secret Service protection for Presidential candidates was expanded after the assassination of Bobby’s father, RFK. Every time our application for Secret Service protection has been denied, apologists for the Department of Homeland Security said it was because protection isn’t guaranteed until 120 days before the election,” they wrote.

“That actually isn’t true – many candidates got it a year or more in advance. Anyway, the election is now less than 120 days away. Still no Secret Service,” they continued.

According to Kennedy’s campaign, the Biden Administration has denied his requests for Secret Service coverage at least five times.

The campaign claims it’s President Joe Biden making the ultimate decision about their candidate’s security, and that it’s a “purely political” one.

Faith E. Pinho | (TNS) Los Angeles Times

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania almost immediately gave rise to internet conspiracy theories that experts say will influence how the nation deals with the shocking act of political violence.

The Trump attack marks the first time in decades someone had tried to take a presidential candidate’s life. While previous assassinations — notably the killing of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 — have brought conspiracy theories, the rise of partisan social media allows such claims to spread rapidly and in unexpected ways.

The Trump shooting claims typically came from random social media users — the writers casting aspersions or seeking to affix blame based on their place in the nation’s intensely polarized political landscape.

The conspiracies formed two now familiar camps — one blaming the “deep state” for what happened, the other claiming without evidence that the shooting was not what it seemed.

“Seemed staged,” one social media user wrote.

But even some elected officials joined with false claims. “Joe Biden sent the orders,” Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) wrote on X, the social media platform.

Some claim their own detective work exposed the conspiracy theories.

“What’s always interesting to me about moments like this is that digital sleuths, be they everyday people, be they politically motivated online trolls … we’re all looking in the same place for reliable true and correct information,” said Joan Donovan, a professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University and founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute. “What’s hard, I think, for the everyday person, is what they’re really looking for is verified information that they can use.”

The current media ecosystem has primed users to feed off rapid, often unverified information, said Michael Spikes, a journalism professor at Northwestern University. And as news outlets shutter across the country, there are fewer sources to vet breaking news events.

As a result, people turn to social media platforms immediately as a news event is breaking. Almost half of all TikTok users say they get their news from the app, according to the Pew Research Center. Occasionally, items that seem unverified at first later become substantiated — such as a video circulating on the Internet message board 4chan that was later confirmed to identify the shooter, Donovan said.

But the purpose of information served up on social media is not always to inform as much as to incite reactions, Spikes said.

“When you have that overload of information, your own reasoning ability sort of shuts down because your brain just goes, this is too much,” he said. “An individual person cannot go through hundreds and hundreds of videos of what has happened, and … make sense out of that. All we can do is react to what we have seen.”

“We’re evolutionarily programmed to search for information when we’re fearful … to basically understand the nature of the threat,” said Erik Nisbet, professor of policy analysis and communication at Northwestern University. “And this is where conspiracy theories like this will take advantage of that sort of emotional reaction.”

By Saturday night, a couple of concerted theories emerged. In one voiced by several prominent conservatives, the belief that Trump is a threat to democracy, often lobbed by the left, effectively placed a target on his back.

“Today is not just some isolated incident,” Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, one of Trump’s shortlisted vice presidential picks, posted on X. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Other social media users pointed to a statement Biden made earlier in the week, when attempting to assuage the swirl of media attention around his debate performance, saying, “It’s time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” Others falsely alleged that security for Trump was cut back.

“Theres an untrue assertion that a member of the former president’s team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed. This is absolutely false,” Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the United States Secret Service, wrote on X. “In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”

Political leaders tried to quell the rising tide of conspiracy theories — even as others among their ranks whipped up the fervor.

“This morning, ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence. We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends,” former First Lady Melania Trump said in a statement. “We can realize this world again. Each of us must demand to get it back. We must insist that respect fills the cornerstone of our relationships, again.”

Meanwhile, the former president’s son Donald Trump Jr. opted for a more impassioned post on X: “Dems and their friends in the media knew exactly what they were doing with the ‘literally Hitler’ bull—!”

The hot takes on the internet create a ripe breeding ground for increased division and potential violence, Nisbet said.

“We see each other as enemies, not as fellow Americans,” Nisbet said. “If the other side is immoral, not human, is an existential threat to us and to our country, then it is morally OK to take violent action against them.”

One of the main drivers of political violence is perception — how violent each side thinks the other is, Nisbet said.

“[It] becomes this reinforcing spiral,” Nisbet said. “That I think the other side is more violent, I engage in violence, and then the other side thinks I’m violent. And this is really dangerous for our democracy.”

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