Former President Trump was escorted away by Secret Service agents, his ears covered in blood, as he raised his fist and said “war” three times, sparking what is probably the most. stable image of the life that is built upon them.
The defiant move during his Saturday night rally in Pennsylvania after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt showed Trump’s instinctive understanding that a visual show of force could help an entire presidential campaign.
“He didn’t miss a beat. I don’t think he has the conscience to continue campaigning while he’s being kicked out.”
It’s too early to assess the full political impact of the moment. But it’s already energizing Trump’s base — and for some voters who aren’t sold on the former president — his ugly images, like his Jan. 6 speech that whipped up supporters of the Capitol attack, his ambivalent response to racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, or any events during and after the president’s term that raised concerns about his fitness for office.
He also set another mark in 2024 as one of the most unusual and unpredictable campaign seasons in recent history.
Despite numerous accusations, an eventual conviction, two impeachments and an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Trump has slipped out of the race for the party’s nomination.
President Biden, the oldest president in history at 81, is rejecting calls from within his own party to drop out of the race after a debate that has sounded alarm bells and been seen by some as his demotion.
Trump is already leading in national polls and in key battleground states, so any growth could be significant.
Party conventions, normally drama-free and packed in modern times, now take on a new meaning. Republican National Conventionwhich begins Monday in Milwaukee, is likely to be dominated by gunfire. The campaign announced that Trump would attend the rally to accept the nomination, hours after an assassination attempt wounded Trump in the ear and left the shooter and another dead.
“The whole town stood up in unison, ‘America!’ they shouted, with their fists,” predicted Douglas Brinkley, a historian and presidential expert at Rice University. “He will be portrayed as a folk hero or a martyr because he survived a near-death experience.”
The Democratic convention in Chicago, which begins on August 19, promises some drama. If Biden decides to withdraw, Democrats will have to choose a replacement in a process yet to be determined. If Biden continues to resist such calls, the party will try to show unity and convince voters that Biden can win the election, despite the terrible polls and for another four years.
Trump was still on his way to the hospital when his supporters turned images of the former president from the shooting into heroic memes online, an extension of the strong persona he had cultivated throughout his television career.
They also began to blame Biden and other Democrats who warned that Trump was a danger to democracy, even as the shooter’s identity and motivations remained unknown. On Sunday morning, the FBI identified him as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old registered Republican.
“Today is not just an isolated incident,” said U.S. Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who is on Trump’s short list of nominees. wrote on social media platform X Saturday night. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. This rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.”
A Republican lawmaker, Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia, was the author of the unproven theory that “Joe Biden sent the orders on his X account,” one of many promoted on social media by so-called baseless deep state conspiracies.
Trump has long fomented violence at his rallies and mocked Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), when he was the victim of a political attack. But Democrats, given the public sympathy Trump generates, could not immediately resist. Many, including Nancy Pelosi, issued statements of prayer and concern.
The current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson of Louisiana, invited everyone “Enough with the rhetoric” on Sunday’s “Imruz” program.
“We need leaders of all parties on both sides of the aisle to speak out and make sure it happens so we can move forward and maintain the free society we are all lucky to have,” he said.
David Gergen, who served in the Reagan White House when the president was shot in 1981, recalled the “outpouring of support” when he became a “martyr.”
“There was just a wave of sympathy for Reagan, and I think you’ll see that this time,” he said.
Gergen, who has served four presidents of both parties over decades, believes that sympathy for Trump could attract undecided voters, and “a significant number of them will go even further: they will see their president almost assassinated.” But this dramatic event could also push Biden to “turn against himself and his team.”
But even many of Trump’s fiercest political critics fear that Biden, now more defined by his age, has little hope of capturing Trump’s symbol of resilience in the face of assassination attempts.
Steve Schmidt, a former political aide to the late Republican Sen. John McCain, said: “The split-screen effect is a man in public scenes versus a man of roughly the same age who is defiant in the face of gunfire.” He has campaigned heavily against Trump. “This kind of conflict is not going to survive for a presidential candidate.”
