Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said Sat­ur­day that “every­body must con­demn” the sus­pect­ed as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt on for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

Ad­dress­ing the na­tion about two hours af­ter the shoot­ing, Biden said he was re­lieved that Trump is re­port­ed­ly “do­ing well.” He said he had been un­able to reach Trump be­fore his re­marks, but the White House said he did speak to Trump sev­er­al hours lat­er.

“We can­not al­low this to be hap­pen­ing,” Biden said. “The idea that there’s vi­o­lence in Amer­i­ca like this is just un­heard of.”

Biden, speak­ing with­out a teleprompter, said he was wait­ing for ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion be­fore for­mal­ly call­ing the at­tack an at­tempt­ed as­sas­si­na­tion on the for­mer pres­i­dent.

“I have an opin­ion, but I don’t have any facts,” he told re­porters, pledg­ing to pro­vide up­dates as he learns more.

Af­ter mid­night, he re­turned to the White House, cut­ting short a week­end stay in Delaware. The White House said he and Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris will re­ceive an up­dat­ed brief­ing from home­land se­cu­ri­ty and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials Sun­day morn­ing.

The pres­i­dent de­liv­ered re­marks from the White House’s emer­gency brief­ing room in Re­hoboth Beach, Delaware, which is set up when­ev­er the pres­i­dent trav­els to al­low him to de­liv­er re­marks to the coun­try in a mat­ter of min­utes. He was spend­ing the week­end at his beach home and was at a near­by church for mass when the shoot­ing oc­curred.

As he left the church, re­porters asked if the pres­i­dent had been briefed about the shoot­ing. Biden turned to­ward re­porters with a se­ri­ous look on his face but replied sim­ply, “no,” be­fore step­ping in­to his mo­tor­cade.

Biden re­ceived an “ini­tial brief­ing” from aides mo­ments lat­er then con­vened se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials for a more in-depth up­date from Kim­ber­ly Chea­tle, the di­rec­tor of the Unit­ed States Se­cret Ser­vice, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Ale­jan­dro May­orkas, and White House home­land se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Liz Sher­wood-Ran­dall.

Many Re­pub­li­cans quick­ly blamed the vi­o­lence on Biden and his al­lies, ar­gu­ing that sus­tained at­tacks on Trump as a threat to democ­ra­cy have cre­at­ed a tox­ic en­vi­ron­ment. They point­ed in par­tic­u­lar to a com­ment Biden made to donors on Ju­ly 8, say­ing “it’s time to put Trump in the bulls­eye.”

The FBI ear­ly Sun­day iden­ti­fied the shoot­er as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Penn­syl­va­nia. There was no im­me­di­ate in­for­ma­tion on his mo­ti­va­tions.

The Biden cam­paign said Sat­ur­day that it was paus­ing all mes­sag­ing to sup­port­ers and work­ing to pull down all of its tele­vi­sion ads as quick­ly as pos­si­ble in light of the shoot­ing.

Har­ris said in a state­ment that she was al­so briefed, adding that she and her hus­band “are re­lieved” that Trump was not se­ri­ous­ly in­ured.

“We are pray­ing for him, his fam­i­ly, and all those who have been in­jured and im­pact­ed by this sense­less shoot­ing,” she said

BY  WILL WEIS­SERT

RE­HOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP)