Despite his recent appeals for unity and restraint following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, US President Joe Biden didn't hold back in an interview on Monday and went back to accusing his Republican rival of inflammatory rhetoric.
Trump "talks about there'd be a bloodbath if he loses," Biden told NBC News anchor Lester Holt, two days after Trump was injured by a shooter at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Biden, who in the wake of the attack stressed the need "to lower the temperature in our politics," said it was Trump's own rhetoric, not his, that had heated up the campaign ahead of November's presidential elections.
"Look, I'm not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one," Biden said, referring to previous remarks made by Trump.
"I'm not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election."
"I'm not the guy who said that wouldn't accept the outcome of this election automatically."
"I have not engaged in that rhetoric ... My opponent has engaged in that rhetoric."
Following the attack on Trump on Saturday, Biden called for unity and condemned the attack several times.
"In America, we resolve our difference at the ballot box, not with bullets," Biden said in a formal Oval Office address on Sunday evening.
"The path forward through competing visions of the campaign should always be resolved peacefully, not through acts of violence."
Asked by NBC's Holt what he could do himself to cool down the political debate, Biden said: "Continue to talk about the things that matter to the American public."
"It matters whether or not you, for example, talk about how you’re gonna deal with the border instead of talking about people as being vermin ... those things matter. That’s the kind of language that is inflammatory."
Some of Trump's fiercest supporters have accused Biden of being partially responsible for the attack due to his rhetoric.
Biden has repeatedly described his rival as an existential threat to democracy.
