It has happened again. Another serene and sunny weekend. Another lone suspect wielding a rifle. Another apparent bid to assassinate Donald Trump. And a nation hurtling into uncharted territory 50 days from a presidential election.
On Sunday, Secret Service agents opened fire after seeing a man with a rifle near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club in Florida while the Republican candidate was playing. The suspect fled in an SUV and was later apprehended by local law enforcement.
The FBI discovered in the bushes two backpacks, an AK-47-style firearm with a scope and a GoPro camera – suggesting a plan to kill Trump on his own golf course and film it for all the world to witness.
The incident was the latest shocking moment in a campaign year marked by unprecedented upheaval and fears of violence and civil unrest. It came nine weeks after Trump was shot during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet grazed his ear and a supporter was killed. The former president’s bloodied, defiant response, urging supporters to “Fight!”, prompted headline writers to ask: Did Donald Trump just win the election?
But a week later, Joe Biden withdrew from the race and was quickly replaced by Kamala Harris. The assassination attempt faded from a hectic news cycle and earned only a passing mention at Tuesday’s debate. Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump aide, complained at the recent Moms for Liberty conference: “We’re seven weeks away and it’s as if it never happened. It’s been memory-holed, more effectively than George Orwell could ever have imagined.”
It is true that what happened that day in Pennsylvania should be remembered, not for partisan reasons, nor as evidence that Trump is protected by God, but because of what it resurfaced: a nation with a long history of political violence bracing for what has been dubbed “a tinderbox election”.
Danger and instability have become a feature not a bug of US political life. A white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of a civil rights activist. A mob of angry Trump supporters storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. A hammer attack on House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul in their home. Countless threats of violence to members of Congress and judges.
A new documentary film, The Last Republican, features sinister voicemails left for congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Trump critic who sat on the House January 6 committee. One says: “You little cocksucker. Are you Liz Cheney’s fag-hag? You two cock-sucking little bitches. We’re gonna get ya. Coming to your house, son. Ha ha ha ha!”
As the election draws near, the temperature only rises. False accusations that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbour’s cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, have led to bomb threats and school closures. Just as at Trump’s rally nine weeks ago, innocent people are the collateral damage of reckless propaganda.
The normalisation of violence crosses partisan boundaries. In 2017 a man with anti-Republican views opened fire during a practice session for the annual congressional baseball game, injuring five people including House majority whip Steve Scalise. There is more support for violence against Trump (10% of American adults) than for violence in favour of Trump (6.9%), according to a survey conducted in late June by the University of Chicago.
But only one of the two major parties is actively fanning the flames. Trump encouraged strongarm tactics against protesters at his rallies. He mocked Pelosi over the hammer attack. He called for shoplifters to be shot and disloyal generals to be executed for treason. He warned of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected and claimed that undocumented people in the US are “poisoning the blood of our country”.
It is enough to fill any concerned citizen with foreboding about the coming election – and what comes next in a nation that has more guns than people. Trump, a convicted criminal with more cases looming over him, is in a desperate fight to stay out of prison. Having never acknowledged his 2020 loss, he has refused to commit to accepting the outcome in 2024, promising “long-term prison sentences” for anyone involved in “unscrupulous behavior”.
With Republicans focused on “election integrity” efforts, poll workers could face intolerable levels of violence and intimidation. Opinion polls suggest that the election will be perilously close, giving plenty of scope to sow doubt, likely to be turbocharged by Elon Musk’s X social media platform.
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As the Axios website recently noted: “A perfect storm has been brewing for years now – fueled by extreme polarization, election denial, political violence, historic prosecutions and rampant disinformation. Mayhem is bound to rain down in November.”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in May found that more than two in three Americans say they are concerned about extremist violence after the election. Last month Patrick Gaspard, a former White House official, told reporters at a Bloomberg in Chicago that the US faces “multiple January 6th-like incidents” at state capitols if Harris ekes out a narrow electoral college victory.
Biden and Harris rightly condemned both attempted assassinations and said they were glad Trump is safe. Even his harshest critics should not condone such actions. But it is inescapably also true that, like a one-man Chornobyl, Trump has polluted the political atmosphere and created a permission structure for violence.
His response to Sunday’s close call? Emails and text messages declaring: “I will not stop fighting for you. I will Never Surrender!” – and asking his supporters for money.