Just 63 days after the first assassination attempt against Donald Trump, almost a week after the polarizing presidential debate and 50 days before the lopsided November 5 election, new “fuel on the fire” has been added to the divided US political scene, with intense “gunpowder” smell.
Amid political fluidity in the Western superpower and geopolitical instability around the world, a 58-year-old American gunman with a criminal record, a record interest in recruiting foreign fighters for Ukraine and Taiwan and an alleged shifting political views was arrested on Sunday as the new would-be Republican assassin former president and re-presidential candidate in the USA.
He was about 400 meters from where the former and would-be next US president practiced his favorite sport – already the target of an assassination attempt on July 13.
Unlike the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, the perpetrator this time was located relatively early by the (charged with the security of civilians and already criticized for inefficiency) US Secret Service.
Under fire, he fled and was finally arrested, but with the almost unbelievable help of a passerby-eyewitness.
Also unlike on July 13, Donald Trump was not injured.
Having, however, abandoned the – already short-lived since then – message of national unity, which he has been eroding ever since with his divisive rhetoric, he is now moving into a full pre-election counterattack against his political opponents.
“Nothing will slow me down,” the Republican presidential candidate declared in an email to supporters.
“I WILL NEVER SURRENDER”!
Culture of toxicity and violence
Although it has only been two months since the previous assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the event seemed until this Sunday to have been almost erased from the political consciousness of a polarized US.
The withdrawal of American President Biden from the race for the White House, the political “resurrection” of the Democrats with the presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris and a new presidential debate of vitriolic political confrontation, where the issue of politics and endemic armed violence in general in the USA it went down the drain.
This time however, although not accompanied by the power of the image, the new assassination attempt is expected to shuffle the pre-election deck.
But in terms of political gambling and not of substance to the #1 military, economic and nuclear power of the West.
A country in rampant gun ownership, which has experienced the invasion of the Capitol by a fanatical mob of Trump supporters three years ago, as many deadly mass shootings even in schools, and is now heading for a climate of quasi-civil war at the polls, steeped in a culture of violence.
“We must all do what we can to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,” declared Democratic presidential candidate and US Vice President Kamala Harris.
But she and the Biden administration are again in the crosshairs, after the unproven connection of Trump and his allies between the – still under investigation – first assassination attempt against him and efforts by his political opponents to prevent him from returning to power.
Position, which Donald Trump now repeats.
“There are people in this world,” he said in one of his campaign messages, “who will do whatever it takes to stop us.”
Seeing the ‘tree’, missing the ‘forest’
There is no doubt that Trump’s demonization resonates with the fringe, who are mentally unstable. How an assassin was allowed to get so close to President Trump again needs to be looked into.
Even left-leaning California Democratic Rep. Ro Cana — dubbed the “next Bernie Sanders” — called it “unacceptable” in a social media post to have “two assassination attempts” against Trump in two months, calling for cross-party support for increased funding for the former president’s security.
This is likely not the last form of political violence we will see until November, most likely after the elections.
