False: Trump called for Biden to be 'shot'.

By: Ganashree N A
February 23 2021

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Donald Trump has frequently used the word 'shot' to assert his notion that Joe Biden lacks the mental acuity to be the president of the US. In Oct 2020, right before the US presidential elections, a video started doing the rounds on social media with the claim that President Donald Trump had been caught on camera at a rally in Michigan, calling for the assassination of his rival, president-elect Joe Biden. In a short video clip, Trump can be heard saying, "Kamala. Do you like Kamala? Do you like her to be your first president? I don’t think so. If he gets elected, three weeks into his presidency they’ll say “Kamala, you ready? Let’s go. That’s why they’re talking about the, that’s why they talk about the 25th Amendment, right? Three weeks. Three weeks in, Joe’s shot, “Let’s go Kamala, you ready?” Most liberal person in the Senate. She makes Bernie Sanders look like a serious conservative. This will not be — we can’t let it happen — this will not be the first woman president. You’re going to have a woman president, this will not be the first woman president. The claim that Trump called for Biden's assassination is a gross misrepresentation of the context. On multiple occasions during his election campaign, Trump has attacked Biden by questioning his fitness for office and mental agility. He coined the belittling nicknames 'Slow Joe' and 'Sleepy Joe' to launch an offensive during Biden. According to a fact check by Snopes, the president has also frequently used the adjective “shot” to describe what he presents as Biden’s lack of mental acuity and fitness for the post of president. Trump has also used the word 'shot' to push the narrative that Biden is mentally unfit for the presidency. In an Oct 15 interview with Stuart Varney on Fox Business, Trump explicitly explained that by “shot” he meant “mentally shot”: I’ll tell you what, people better hope he doesn’t win, because if he wins — first of all, he’s going to have nothing to do with it because he’s shot, he’s mentally shot. Everybody knows it. And he’s going to have nothing to do with it. It’s going to be run by other people who are vicious and smart, and radical Left, and Antifa." In another instance, Trump called Biden as “the dumbest of all candidates” and again used the word 'shot' to lampoon him: "Now he’s shot, he’s got like half of his head left…he’s totally shot, and he ends up getting the nomination. He couldn’t get it in prime time. What the hell is going on with the world today?” Trump’s broader argument was that voters should not choose Biden in part because if he is elected, his purportedly weak mental condition would quickly prompt congressional Democrats to use the 25th Amendment — which governs a hypothetical scenario in which the president is no longer able to “discharge the powers and duties of his office” — to replace him with Harris, whom Trump portrays as a left-wing extremist, Snopes stated. Given his reference to the 25th Amendment, the assertion that Trump would call for Biden's assassination is logically fallacious because in that case the president would be dead and not just incapacitated.