Biden campaign in disarray after Trump shooting

Following the incident, President's re-election campaign pulled advertisements and fundraising messages

US President Joe Biden delivers an address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Reuters

US President Joe Biden's re-election campaign is in further disarray after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

Even before Saturday's shooting, Mr Biden's bid to stay in the White House was facing an existential crisis, with fellow Democrats calling on the President, 81, to step aside after a poor debate performance and subsequent gaffes underscored his apparent cognitive decline.

Now Mr Biden must address the split screen of his own seemingly feeble physical and mental state contrasted with Trump's bloodied and defiant pose after a bullet nicked his ear at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Further complicating Mr Biden's messaging is the fact that his campaign has had to pull many of the negative advertisements that had been planned to attack Trump.

Mr Biden has cited Trump's refusal to accept the results of the 2020 elections, his involvement in riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 and his overall rhetoric to make the case to the American people that Trump is a would-be dictator.

The Biden campaign had invested tens of millions of dollars in advertisements attacking Trump as a threat to democracy, but observers say that argument has lost resonance with voters now that the former president has become the victim of the most extreme form of anti-democratic assault.

The President must now overcome the “common perception that he's weak, or the weaker of the two candidates”, John Feehery, a Republican strategist, told The National.

Mr Feehery said the argument that Trump is a threat to democracy had failed to land with many voters even before the shooting, as it resonated more with wealthy liberal voters than everyday Americans who care more about the kitchen table and economic issues.

Experts suggest Mr Biden could continue to portray himself as a “good steward for America” but move away from attacks on Trump and focus on issues such as the economy and reproductive rights.

But anything Mr Biden says this week may be largely drowned out by the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Trump is expected to be feted as a hero as he is officially nominated as the party's presidential candidate.

“I think that this week for [Biden], he has to recalibrate and he is not going to win it this week, he's not going to make the comeback this week,” Mr Feehery said.

“So he's got to just give the Republicans their time and apply the strategies from there.”

A quiet mutiny that had been gathering momentum among Democrats to pressure Mr Biden to step down appears to have quelled since the shooting but many remain unhappy with the President and see him as having little chance of beating Trump in the November 5 election.

In a debate with Trump last month, Mr Biden gave a widely criticised performance in which he frequently failed to finish sentences, muddled words and looked ill.

At a Nato summit last week, he referred to his own deputy, Kamala Harris, as “Vice President Trump” and mixed up the names of the Russian and Ukrainian presidents.

Mr Biden was due to give an interview to NBC News that would be broadcast late on Monday. Biden officials told US media the President's campaign would be stepped up again after the broadcast, with a message that would contrast his vision for the future with that of Trump, who frequently speaks in apocalyptic terms about the state of the US.

"While I think the messaging needs to be reshaped or reworded in some way, the core piece of truth there does not change," Democratic strategist Alyssa Batchelor told The National.

"President Biden did a really great job of addressing the nation and addressing that we solve our differences at the ballot box, not with political violence."

Ms Batchelor said it was unlikely for the shooting or its aftermath to have a lasting impact on the vote in November, amid a constantly evolving and unpredictable news cycle.