Biden campaign, DNC resume counterprogramming to GOP convention after Trump assassination attempt

President Biden’s reelection team and his party are resuming campaigning and counterprogramming to the GOP convention this week, after a brief pause in advertising and “outbound communications” in light of Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. 

While Mr. Biden postponed a planned speech Monday in Austin, Texas, he is keeping a scheduled campaign swing in the battleground state of Nevada on Tuesday and Wednesday, where he’ll speak to two core constituencies for his election prospects: Black voters at an NAACP conference and Latino voters at a UnidosUS conference.

Vice President Kamala Harris will also campaign in Michigan and North Carolina this week, including a conversation with former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, Olivia Troye, who has since come out against Trump administration. 

Fundraising texts from Mr. Biden’s campaign also resumed Monday, with two of the three of them about Trump’s pick of Sen. JD Vance as his running mate. 

“How does a guy who used to say that Donald Trump and his policies were ‘reprehensible’ become Donald Trump’s running mate?” one of the fundraising texts reads. 

Activity in Milwaukee has picked up too: Starting Tuesday, the Biden campaign is holding press conferences on each day of the GOP convention, and the Democratic National Committee has put up several billboards in the city that criticize the Trump-Vance ticket and tout Mr. Biden’s record. 

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the Biden campaign was still calculating how it’d impact the race at large. Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told staffers on a call Sunday, “there’s no charted course for what we’re going through in this country and for this campaign,” according to sources familiar. 

But with Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Convention in full swing, a pause in public Democratic Congressional defections about Mr. Biden’s place on the ticket, and just 112 days until the November election, the Biden campaign has settled back into their message of contrasts on abortion, the economy and democracy.

Asked at a Tuesday press conference how the campaign’s rhetoric has changed after Saturday’s attack, Biden campaign deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said it hasn’t.

“We’ve been focused on talking about the issues, reproductive freedom, workers rights, social security, Medicare, the economy, a fair tax code,” he said. “We’re going to continue to have a candid conversation about the stark contrast.”

In a Monday interview with NBC, Mr. Biden said it was a “mistake” to say it was “time to put Trump in a bullseye” during a July donor call, but he also noted Trump has repeatedly engaged in rhetoric about political violence. He cited Trump denying his 2020 election loss leading up to Jan. 6 and his jokes about the assault of former speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

“How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say anything, because it may incite somebody?” Mr. Biden said. 

And shortly after Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate, the Biden campaign put out statements that said Vance was picked because he “will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda.”

The tone and rhetoric from Mr. Biden, Trump and Republican speakers in Milwaukee, are under a microscope after Saturday’s attack at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa. 

Numerous speakers at the RNC convention on Monday called for “unity,” though at one point Sen. Ron Johnson said the Democratic party’s policies are a “clear and present danger to America.” Johnson later told CBS News that the teleprompter had loaded a previous version of the speech, written prior to Saturday’s assassination attempt. 

Trump suggested in a Sunday interview with the New York Post the campaign between him and Biden could be more civil, though did not have specifics. 

Mr. Biden and Trump had a phone call shortly after Saturday’s shooting, which sources described as respectful. And in three sets of remarks about Saturday’s attack, including an Oval Office address on Sunday, Mr. Biden repeatedly condemned political violence and said it’s time to “cool down” the political rhetoric. 

Republicans, including Vance, blamed rhetoric from Biden’s campaign about the former president being a threat to democracy as leading to the attempted assassination.

Law enforcement has not yet determined a motive by the shooter, and Biden campaign officials have said anyone “politicizing this tragedy, spreading disinformation and seeking to further divide Americans isn’t just unacceptable – it’s an abdication of leadership.”

Asked if or how the campaign’s message would be impacted by Saturday’s shooting, Mr. Biden’s campaign told reporters “the path forward is a path that is clearly two competing visions and campaigns that can certainly, and must be, resolved peacefully through debate and disagreement.”

“[Biden] got into this race, first of all, in 2019 because of the violence that we were seeing in the country and I think what you’re going to hear from him is really making a very clear contrast about his optimistic vision for this country,” said O’Malley Dillon.

Democratic strategist and CBS News contributor Joel Payne said Mr. Biden’s pause of contrast campaigning over the weekend was appropriate, but it’s also the right move for the campaign to resume its messaging. 

“It would kind of be a betrayal of who we intended to be if we just said, because a bad thing happened, we can’t disagree with each other,” Payne said. “Would hope that everybody takes a second look at the language they use when contrasting. But actually campaigning, contrasting, disagreeing — that’s ok.”

The Biden campaign has highlighted Vance’s anti-abortion record as an example of where they can emphasize the differences between the Biden ticket with Harris, who has made reproductive rights her signature issue on the campaign trail. 

“The VP will take it to JD Vance,” said Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on the call. “She is strong, she knows what she’s talking about, she doesn’t give an inch and she has the better end of the argument.”

If Vance agrees to debate Harris, the campaign reassures that Harris is “fully prepared to take him on.” Harris previously accepted an invitation from CBS News to participate in the first vice presidential debate. 

The race between Biden and Trump remains largely unchanged after an unsteady debate performance that spurred calls from Democratic lawmakers for Biden to step down (he told NBC Monday he has not changed his mind about staying in the race).

According to CBS News polling in July, taken before Saturdays’ attack, Trump had a narrow overall edge in every battleground state – though still within the margin of error. 

Asked by NBC about the impact Saturday’s assassination attempt could have on the election, Mr. Biden replied, “I don’t know. And you don’t know either.” 

Weijia Jiang and Robert Costa contributed reporting.