MILWAUKEE — President Biden appeared to defend saying that Democrats should put Donald Trump in a “bullseye” less than a week before the former president was shot, saying “I didn’t say crosshairs.”
“I was talking about ‘focus on,’” the 81-year-old president told NBC anchor Lester Holt in an interview Monday.
“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.”
Holt interjected, “Yeah, the term was ‘bullseye’.”
Biden then seemed to describe the term as a “mistake” before breaking off the thought mid-sentence.
“It was a mistake to use the wor — I didn’t say crosshairs, I meant bullseye, I meant focus on him, focus on what he’s doing,” Biden said.
Republicans have hammered Biden for his rhetoric in the immediate runup to the assassination attempt — including Biden saying Friday at a Michigan event that Trump would regain power “over my dead body” and tweeting Friday that Trump would be “a dictator.”
Follow The Post’s latest stories on the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump:
- Trump says he ‘felt the bullet ripping through my skin’ in first statement since assassination attempt
- Donald Trump urges the nation to not let ‘evil win’ and to ‘fear not’ after shooting
- Gunman behind attempted assassination of Trump had head blown off by Secret Service, sources say; rally-goer killed
- Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks was loner ‘relentlessly’ bullied in high school: classmate
- How Trump’s split-second head turn may have saved his life from assassin’s bullet
- Ex-volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore ID’d as Trump sniper victim, shielded his daughter from assassin’s bullets
- Search for Trump shooter’s motive delayed by explosives found in home and car: sources
Keep up to date with The Post’s live blog on the assassination attempt on Trump
Last Monday, Biden called on Democrats to redirect from focusing on his disastrous June 27 debate performance by putting Trump in a “bullseye.”
“We’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,” Biden told donors.
Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, grazed Trump with a bullet after climbing atop a roof near his rally in Butler, Pa. Two other rally attendees were wounded and one was killed.
Authorities have not yet disclosed information linking Crooks’ attack to Democratic rhetoric, but Trump allies immediately slammed the incumbent president for what they said was reckless wording about his Republican challenger.
Biden used a rare Oval Office address Sunday night to call on Americans to “lower the temperature” of the campaign.