The failed attack by 20-year-old Thomas Mathew Crooks on former US President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania political rally on July 13, as the New York Times put it, “plunges the 2024 presidential race into shock and uncertainty”. It occurred just days before the Republican Party’s July 15-18 national convention in Milwaukee to anoint Mr Trump as its presidential candidate.
The shooting brings both relief and anxiety to US President Joe Biden. It shifts the focus from the debate about his physical fitness for another term, since his pathetic performance in the first Trump-Biden debate. However, it invites sharp Republican attack on him for his responsibility for it.
Republican Senator J.D. Vance, who was nominated by Mr Trump as his vice-presidential running mate on the first day of the convention, was quick to take to the social media to argue that the targeting of Mr Trump as a neo-fascist and authoritarian threat to American democracy had provoked the attack. Other senior Republicans mostly followed that line, excepting House Speaker Mike Johnson.
President Joe Biden, on the other hand, seeks “the temperature in our politics” to be lowered, adding that: “We cannot allow this violence to be normalised”. He has ordered an independent probe into the incident and instructed the Secret Service to review the security at the Milwaukee Republican convention. His critics will say it is a case of too little too late.
Despite the finger-pointing at the Democrats by Mr Trump and his supporters, the polarisation in the United States, both ideological and cultural, is more attributable to Mr Trump. He has now and earlier encouraged violent actions, especially the mob attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. The sole aim of that insurrection was to stop the US Congress from attesting the presidential poll results. He has continued to deny his poll defeat, alleging massive fraud. In any democracy, the biggest lapse is to undermine the peaceful transfer of power.
But the gunman has now gifted Mr Trump victimhood, purging his gross breach of democratic norms and conduct. The US unfortunately has a long history of political violence involving Presidents or presidential candidates. Four Presidents have been assassinated, from Abraham Lincoln in 1835, to James A. Garfield in 1881, William Mckinley in 1901 and finally John F. Kennedy in 1963. Attacks failed on President Andrew Jackson in 1835 and later on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan, who was nearly killed due to multiple-bullet injuries.
Mr Trump’s case aligns with that of Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt’s shooting, while campaigning for presidency, three years after demitting office, in 1912. While Mr Trump was rushed to hospital with a grazing ear-wound with a clenched fist dramatically raised, Roosevelt continued his speech despite the bullet lodged in his chest muscle. His folded speech and spectacle case kept it from penetrating his lungs.
The young attacker’s motive is still being explored by the FBI. His co-employees at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre, where he worked, and past classmates found no indication of such potential criminal misconduct.
While he was registered as a Republican voter, he had also contributed to a Democrat-linked group. Past perpetrators have had disparate motives. John Hinckley, who shot President Ronald Reagan, said he was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster.
However, the toxicity and partisanship in American politics over the last decade is a major factor. The New York Times reports that the Capitol police in Washington DC says it handled 8,008 cases last year of threats to members of Congress. Mr Trump’s initial incitement of a large gathering in January 2021 and then inaction when the mob overran the US Capitol complex, housing the Senate and the House, reflects poorly on the state of US democracy. Reportedly, when Mr Trump was told that the Capitol mob threatened to harm vice-president Mike Pence, he seemed to justify it.
There is a serious difference between the US of the 1960s, when many political assassinations and huge public protests occurred, and today’s America. At that time a bipartisan consensus existed on the need for public equanimity and the rule of law. Partisanship today is dividing America so severely that even the Supreme Court is captured by those subscribing to one ideology.
The failed assassination is likely to merely fuel the divide. It may have improved Mr Trump’s chances of winning as his supporters will be motivated to vote in larger numbers. However, Mr Trump’s biggest enemy is Mr Trump himself. With over three months remaining for the election, he may lose the sympathy he has been gifted by intemperate words or actions. Even though the Supreme Court had already irrationally expanded presidential immunity, now no court can be seen sentencing him in the interregnum, even for blatantly criminal acts, beyond official duties.
The focus will inevitably return to Mr Biden’s verbal slip-ups as the campaign proceeds.
But pressure on him to drop out may diminish. Democrats will try to transfer the blame back to the Republicans for their dogged resistance to gun-law reform.
The weapon used in the current episode is an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle, which has been one of the dangerous weapons sought to be banned.
The fundamental issue is the collapse of issue-based and balanced discourse in the US. According to a Marist poll in May, 47 per cent of Americans foresee a second civil war during their lifetimes. In a fractured polity, the re-election of Donald Trump, who rejects all allegations of personal or political misconduct, including criminal activity, may lead to a witch-hunt by him against those he perceives as his oppressors. That can range from President Biden and his son to prosecutors, witnesses and judges. This shattering of internal cohesion is what China and Russia would celebrate.
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov jumped to conclude that the US President and his party have put Mr Trump’s life in “obvious” danger, after first trying to remove him from the race using “legal tools”. The Russian foreign ministry spokesman criticised the state of American democracy which “the liberals brought to the verge of suicide”. The conspiracy theories being peddled by Russian sources are remarkably akin to those that Mr Trump and his supporters espouse.
The next few days are critical for the Democrats to regain control of the public narrative. Otherwise, an unfair battle looms between an enfeebled incumbent and a reinforced and enraged autocrat playing victim.
