On Tuesday, Biden spoke at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of a consequential Union victory during July 1863 of the U.S. Civil War, and echoed the words of Civil War President Abraham Lincoln in calling America “a house divided.”
“Today, once again, we are a house divided. But that, my friends, can no longer be. We are facing too many crises, we have too much work to do, we have too bright a future to have it shipwrecked on the shores of anger and hate and division,” Biden said, according to NPR.
Biden said the contemporary outlook of many Americans concerns him and puts the country in “a dangerous place.”
“Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope is elusive,” he continued. “Too many Americans see our public life not as an arena for the mediation of our differences. Rather, they see it as an occasion for total, unrelenting partisan warfare. Instead of treating the other party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy. This must end.”
“What we need in America is leadership that seeks to deescalate tensions, to open lines of communication, and to bring us together,” he added. “As president, that is precisely what I will do.”
Biden didn’t mention Republican President Donald Trump during his speech, and his plea for conciliation comes just days after he pledged to pull all negative advertising about Trump from the airwaves following the early Friday morning announcement of Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis.
While Biden said last Friday that he and his wife would “continue to pray for the health and safety of the President and the First Lady,” he used his speech on Tuesday to draw contrasts between his and Trump’s plans for handling the virus.
Generally, Trump has been pushing for the rapid development of a COVID-19 vaccine while advocating for herd immunity that would let the virus kill thousands of Americans before it becomes a prevalent presence in U.S. society.
Trump has also pushed for a quick reopening of businesses and schools, often criticizing Democratic governors for “overreach” for keeping such places closed. He has also mocked Biden for continually wearing a facemask while Trump’s largely maskless political rallies skirt local social distancing laws by declaring the events as protests.
In his Tuesday speech, Biden said, “We can be so much better. We can be better starting today. We can have a national strategy that puts politics aside and saves lives. We can have a national strategy that makes it possible for schools and businesses to open safely,” he said. “This pandemic is not a red state or blue state issue.”
Newsweek contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
