President Joe Biden addressed the nation Thursday on President-elect Donald Trump’s resounding electoral victory and urged Americans to unify and “lower the temperature” after a divisive and intense presidential campaign.
Biden gave brief remarks from the White House and praised the American experiment of democratically electing leaders in a peaceful, orderly fashion.
“Yesterday, I spoke with President-elect Trump to congratulate him on his victory and I assured him that I would direct my entire administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition,” Biden said.
“That’s what the American people deserve,” Biden continued.
He went on to praise Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign and her character. Biden stepped aside from the presidential race in July after Democrats publicly revolted against him because of his disastrous debate performance in June. Harris stepped in to become the Democratic nominee not long after and Biden was mostly absent from her campaign.
“Campaigns are contests of competing visions. The country chooses one or the other. We accept the choice the country made. I’ve said many times: you can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t love your neighbor only when you agree. Something I hope we can do no matter who you voted for is see each other not as adversaries but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature,” Biden added.
The outgoing president praised the integrity of the election and the election workers who oversaw the voting process, taking implicit jabs at Trump and his supporters for disputing the 2020 election results. To close the speech, Biden thanked his staff for the past four years and urged Democrats not to give up after a tough election night.
Biden’s rhetoric echoed that of many lawmakers following the first assassination attempt against Trump over the summer. Trump famously got up from the ground and pumped his fist moments after a shot fired by gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks hit his ear during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.
The calls to tone down the political rhetoric were short-lived, and the presidential campaign continued with the intensity Americans have come to expect from both parties. Harris later called Trump a “fascist” on the campaign trail and frequently labeled him an authoritarian strongman.
She nonetheless closed out her campaign with a unity message targeted at moderate Americans tired of partisan anger. In typical fashion, Trump often mocked Harris’s intelligence and apparent inability to give straightforward answers to simple questions.
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