President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have canceled scheduled fundraising and campaign stops after the attempted assassination of former President and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. Harris was slated to be in Florida on Tuesday to speak with "Republican and independent women" about Trump's stance on "reproductive rights." This is Harris' song and dance and really the only thing she seems to do effectively: trumpet the killing of innocent babies. 

Vice President Kamala Harris called out Donald Trump, claiming he stole reproductive rights from Americans when he nominated three conservative Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. pic.twitter.com/vGOF7TP1Rx

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) June 24, 2024

Just hours after announcing her trip to South Florida, Vice President Kamala Harris has postponed her trip to Sunshine State in response to former President Donald Trump's assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

The vice president had originally planned on traveling to Palm Beach, Florida on Tuesday, July 16 for a moderated conversation alongside Republican women to discuss Trump's stance on reproductive rights. 

She was expected to pitch to Republican and independent women that the Biden administration is "the only choice they can trust to protect their freedom to make one's own health care decisions," her office shared in a statement merely hours before the former president took to the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania.

However, in response to the situation in Pennsylvania, Biden campaign officials said her plans had changed.

"In light of the horrific shooting in Pennsylvania, the Vice President's planned campaign trip to Florida has been postponed," a new statement read.

Harris has been in Florida three times this year. Why? Because on the ballot is Measure 4, a proposed amendment to Florida's state constitution that would codify the right to abortion. Since Florida is a deeply red state and already has a heartbeat law in place—a law that was essentially upheld by the state's Supreme Court—the Biden administration has an uphill battle to convince Republicans and moderates who support some form of abortion to vote for the measure. Donald Trump, who Harris herself called a threat to democracy, was almost assassinated on Saturday. So it would be poor optics and even poorer taste to try and convince Republicans that making killing babies a part of the Constitution is a point of urgency.

Biden also had a scheduled trip to Texas on Monday to speak at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This stop also got nixed.

UPDATE:

President Biden’s trip to Texas tomorrow for a fundraiser and a civil rights library opening have been canceled by the White House.

Vice-President Harris’ trip to Florida for a pro-choice event, which was set for Tuesday, has also been canceled.

Both cancelations…

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 14, 2024

From the LBJ Library press release:

On Monday, July 15, 2024, President Joe Biden will deliver a keynote address at the LBJ Presidential Library to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. President Biden and other dignitaries will participate in a public program at the LBJ Auditorium, to be livestreamed to the nation.

“We are honored to have President Biden at the LBJ Library to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act,” said Mark K. Updegrove, President & CEO of the LBJ Foundation and a presidential historian. “It is fitting that he returns to the Library to mark this milestone as our 46th President whose administration is committed to pursuing a ‘comprehensive approach to advancing racial equity for all.’”

The AP is spinning Biden's cancellation as a refocusing on security matters and part of Biden's "appeal to unity" in light of the attempt on Trump. 

Biden quickly denounced the shooting and talked to Trump in its aftermath. His campaign team, meanwhile, is grappling with how to manage the political implications of an attack on the man Biden hopes to defeat in the November election. He postponed a planned trip to Texas on Monday, where he was to speak on the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library in wake of Trump rally shooting, the White House said. 

"Grappling" is the precise word to use. All the campaign rhetoric that has been put forth so far is that Trump is a threat to democracy and will usher in violence. This horrible campaign ad has been running in the Atlanta market for months, reflective of the Biden campaign's tactics.

Now that Trump has had violence enacted upon him, violence that was encouraged by Democrat politicians and leftist actors, people clearly see that the threat to democracy is not coming from Trump or the Republicans.

So, the two main campaign platforms of the Democrat Party have essentially dissolved. Someone tried to violently assassinate a presidential candidate. Children were present, and had they succeeded, would have had the memory of Trump's head exploding seared into their consciousness forever. Thank God the shooter did not succeed. So, nobody wants to hear about child murder under the thinly veiled disguise of "reproductive freedom" or about how a former Democrat president helped enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the current Democrat president has done all he could to deny the rights and civil liberties of Donald Trump, and may well have been complicit in the failure of the Secret Service's inability to properly protect him. But not just Trump. Biden has targeted law-abiding American citizens who pray or protest in front of abortion clinics, doctors who decry the mutilation of children for the sake of gender confusion and the profits that come with it, and parents who simply want their children to live in safety and experience prosperity.

The optics for Biden-Harris and the entire Democrat Party are not looking good right now, and they are scrambling to pivot and retake the narrative on their administration and especially this election. What they don't realize is that it is too little, too late. As my colleague Ward Clark wrote, any campaign efforts on the part of Biden-Harris are now essentially irrelevant. The Republican National Convention this week will help Trump further cement his platform for America, and because of the assassination attempt, the American people's attention is now focused in that direction. Biden may not have officially lost the election yet, but they have already lost.