President Joe Biden promised Black voters on Tuesday that he is fully prepared to run for re-election on Nov. 5 and attacked Donald Trump’s record as president in his first political speech since the assassination attempt on his Republican rival.
As Biden spoke at the NAACP’s annual convention in Las Vegas, where a large crowd of black voters turned out, he was greeted with chants of “four more years.”
Biden said he was grateful Trump was not seriously hurt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, but criticized him on a variety of fronts, including his handling of the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Let me say it again, because Trump is lying about this — Black unemployment has reached record lows under the Biden-Harris administration,” Biden said.
He slammed Trump for initially saying that former President Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen, and for referring to “jobs for black people” in the June 27 Trump-Biden debate.
“I’m totally on board with that,” Biden said.
The Biden campaign pulled back its television ads following Saturday’s vicious attack on Trump, ceasing verbal attacks on the former president and instead focusing on a message of unity.
“Our politics have gotten very heated,” Biden said.
The campaign’s strategy previously was to focus on strong criticism of Trump as a threat to American democracy and to highlight his failure to accept his defeat in the 2020 election and his felony conviction.
Now, he’s trying to deliver a less aggressive message that still draws a clear comparison between the two candidates.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the oldest and largest US civil rights organization, represents a key constituency for the Democratic Party. While black voters voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020, surveys have shown that support for him from the constituency is waning in this election.
“People are concerned about the price of gas, the price of bread, but they’re also concerned about their growing knowledge of Project 2025,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson told Reuters on Monday, referring to conservative policy proposals that have become a focus of attention for Trump’s critics.
On Sunday, Biden used the formal setting of the White House Oval Office to call on Americans to lower the political temperature, recommitting themselves to resolving their differences peacefully. He said the November 5 presidential election would be a “testing time.”
In an interview with NBC News on Monday, Biden said it was a mistake for him to use the word “bullseye” in reference to Trump during a recent donor campaign call.
The president on Monday postponed a trip to Texas, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
White House officials hope Trump’s assassination attempt will reduce pressure on Biden to step down as the Democratic Party’s nominee, amid concerns about his mental acuity and ability to govern for a four-year term.
At the end of his speech in Las Vegas, Biden responded to criticism that he was too old for the position.
He said, “Hopefully I have shown some wisdom today. I know this. I know how to speak the truth. I know the difference between right and wrong. I know how to do this work. And I know that God has not brought us here so that we can now go away from here. We have more work to do.”
On Wednesday, Biden will address Latino leaders at the UnidosUS annual conference in Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans have gathered in Milwaukee for the party’s nominating convention, which began on Monday with the selection of US Senator JD Vance as Trump’s vice presidential running mate.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
