Immediate questions after the attack on Trump

Donald Trump has put out a statement that he’s “fine”. Early reports suggest one person in the crowd was killed, along with the gunman. Few details are known. But a shock like this will upend the campaign dynamic in the presidential race. Immediate questions will be asked after a person fired a weapon at a rally in Pennsylvania in what appears to be an assassination attempt.

What it means for Trump?
Trump’s status among supporters was already garnished with red, white and blue. Now that his blood is shed, with the extraordinary image of him raising a defiant fist as an American flag from the rally fluttered behind, he will enter a pantheon of sacrifice that will be harder for his opponents to deny. Tech billionaire Elon Musk immediately likened Trump to Theodore Roosevelt, offering his endorsement.

With four months of campaigning to go, can Trump safely continue to hold the freewheeling public rallies that he revels in so much? The Secret Service won’t want him to. But Trump showed his determination to signal the crowd to fight, pushing aside the protective detail as they bundled him from the stage.

And those supporters will already be feverishly speculating about the motive of the attacker – some wondering who was pulling the strings. We’re not talking Lee Harvey Oswald type of conspiracy theories but something even more intense in this time of social media overload and AI generated spoofs. Trump has always benefited from the conspiratorial bent that has influenced American politics, designating him as the source of resistance.

What it means for Biden?
The attack on Trump will short-circuit talk of Joe Biden dropping out of the race – maybe for good. Biden has called for calm across the country. Democratic party agitators will still hold doubts about Biden’s age and capacity as a candidate, but will be wary of saying more at this time that could foster unrest.

Biden also notably praised the secret service – part of the “Deep State” that Trump always decries.

The shock complicates Biden’s attack lines on Trump. “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America,” Biden said when calling for the country to unite – but since the January 6 riots, political violence has been associated with the MAGA movement. As my colleague Herve Lemahieu rightly noted, that Trump has been a victim now will spread the association to both sides of politics. Of course, that depends on who was the perpetrator and what was the motive, but agreeing the facts in this time of intense polarisation is going to be hideously difficult.

As Biden has tried to be more assertive in the past few days, he had focused particularly on gun control as an issue, pledging to ban assault rifles and saying Trump had “promised the NRA that he’d do nothing about guns”. But any talk of gun control now will only bring back attention to what happened to Trump – and for many Americans, this event will reinforce the need to carry arms, not take them away.

What it means for America?
The fissures in American politics threaten to widen. If the debate over the January 6 riots has been wild, expect it to rise a notch.

But America and its government system is more resilient than many a shrill cable news host would be willing to admit. The country has coped with political violence before. This isn’t to dismiss the magnitude of this moment, only to warn against the doomsayers. There is still a race to decide.

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