Biden, Democrats discuss strategy after Trump attack turns campaign upside down

US President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is scrambling to come up with a new strategy following the assassination attempt on Republican rival Donald Trump in western Pennsylvania, including a decision to call off attacks on the former president for now.

Within hours of Saturday’s (13) attack, Biden’s campaign was pulling television ads and suspending other political communications, including those highlighting Trump’s May conviction in New York state court on criminal charges related to a payment made to a porn star to avert a sex scandal ahead of the 2016 election.

Rather than attack Trump in the coming days, the White House and Biden’s campaign will rely on the former president’s record of condemning all types of political violence, including his harsh criticism of the “disorder” created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict, according to a campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Biden’s advisers had hoped to counter recent calls from fellow Democrats and others for him to step aside and let another candidate represent the party in the Nov. 5 election, heightening the danger he says Trump poses to U.S. democracy and reproductive rights, as well as Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.

“This changes everything,” one campaign official said of the assassination attempt. “We’re still evaluating it. It’s going to be much harder to present the criticisms of Trump, to draw that split screen,” he said. “The president is trying to lower the temperature,” he added.

Biden campaign officials said they hoped the assassination attempt would ease pressure from Democratic lawmakers for Biden, 81, to step away from the race amid concerns about his fitness for office. Some Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate had publicly called on Biden to drop out after his performance in the June debate against Trump.

Watch the moment Trump is injured at a rally in the US