Welcome to the lead, I'm Casey Hunt in today for Jake Tapper. President Biden, you saw

there just wrapping up his speech on his plans to quote, fund the police. The president

emphasizing his support for law enforcement officers across the country. He also announced

a new push to try to take on gun violence by adamantly saying he wants to ban assault

weapons. I want to bring in MJ Lee, who is at the White House. MJ, it's notable where

the president is speaking today. He is in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state.

Yeah, that's absolutely right, Casey. And even though this was a speech that was built

of public safety speech, there's no question that this was absolutely also a political

speech as well. It was interesting some of the key themes over arching political themes

that we've heard the president talk about. They are becoming increasingly familiar. At

one point in the speech, he talked about going abroad, traveling abroad and having world

leaders essentially ask him, what is happening over there in America? And him essentially

having to answer questions about sort of the state of democracy in this country. So this

was just one more way in which the president sort of hammered home the theme of protecting

democracy here in the US. And as you can see here, he is now mingling with some of the

folks in the crowd. Before he took the stage, we had a number of local elected officials

go on stage and introduce him. So in that way too, it very much had the vibe of a political

event. But I will note that one person, one candidate who is notably missing from this

event is Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman. He was not at this event. Now Pennsylvania,

as you know, is obviously a very important and key battleground state. And we are going

to see the president return to the state more times in the coming few days, including

on Monday, on Labor Day. And then also on Thursday, he is going to be traveling to Philadelphia

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