A shooting at former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally – which is being investigated as an assassination attempt – upended the already dark and tumultuous race for the White House.
Trump’s campaign said he still plans to attend the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled to begin in Milwaukee on Monday. But the shooting is sure to shift the messaging and tenor – not to mention the security – of the massive gathering where the former president is expected to announce his running mate and try to unify his party and the nation behind his vision of grievance and retribution.
President Biden, speaking from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, condemned the shooting. Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, announced it was pausing its communication and pulling down all television ads as quickly as possible.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence,” Biden said in remarks from the Rehoboth Beach police department. “It’s sick. ... It cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”
Trump had been speaking for less than 10 minutes in Butler, Pennsylvania, when several loud pops rang out and the former president put his hand to his right ear, the upper part of which had been pierced by a bullet, he later said on social media. As Secret Service agents encircled the former president, Trump raised his right fist defiantly and scowled, mouthing: “Fight. Fight. Fight.”
Several images of the moment – including one with a blood-streaked Trump in the shadow of an American flag – are already ricocheting around social media, all but certain to prove iconic. Several Republican lawmakers simply posted the photos without any words.
The US Secret Service announced that a suspected shooter had been killed.
The shooter’s motives were unknown late on Saturday. But the shooting – whose shock waves are still rippling outward – is certain to scramble the presidential contest, which was already plunged into turmoil just over two weeks ago, when Biden’s halting debate performance raised questions about his age and ability to run a vigorous campaign.
Trump is often most comfortable – and most effective – when playing both martyr and victim, and Saturday’s shooting naturally thrusts him back into that role. Trump immediately put out a statement thanking the Secret Service and law enforcement, expressing his condolences to the other victims and offering a dramatic recounting of the moment.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” he wrote. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
The images of Trump in the immediate aftermath of the shooting are likely to become iconic, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.
“There’s something in the American spirit that likes seeing fortitude and courage under pressure and the fact that Trump held his fist up high will become a new symbol,” Brinkley said. “By surviving an attempted assassination, you become a martyr, because you get a groundswell of public sympathy.”
The violence, at least for the moment, seemed to overtake the previously dominant narrative of the campaign: the Democratic disarray following Biden’s debate performance and many Democrats’ desire that he step aside for a younger candidate.
But it also likely complicates Biden and his team’s calculations going forward. Speaking to donors on a private phone call, Biden said it was time to train his focus on Trump.
“I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump,” he said. “I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bull’s eye.”
Trump had yet to be discharged from the hospital when Republicans began saying that Biden’s rhetoric had led to Saturday’s violence.
Representative Mike Collins (R-Ga) pointed to Biden’s remarks – specifically about putting Trump in the bull’s eye – and blamed Biden for the violence.
“Joe Biden sent the orders,” Collins wrote on social media Saturday night, shortly after the shooting.
The America First Policy Institute, a key outside group that seeks to elevate the policies embraced by Trump, held a virtual prayer vigil at 9pm Saturday night. Religious leaders offered prayers. One said that there was no question that God had intervened to spare Trump’s life. Another thanked God that Melania Trump is not a widow.
As he led a prayer on behalf of the rally attendee who lost their life, Frank Pavone, the national director of Priests for Life, spoke of the attack on Trump as an attack on “all of us,” echoing Trump’s routine claims of martyrdom.
“We recall the words that President Trump always says to us: It’s not that they are coming after him,” Pavone said. “They are coming after us – all of us – he’s just standing in the way.”
Brinkley said that the timing of the shooting – on the eve of the Republican convention in Milwaukee – underscores similarities between Trump and former president Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1912 was seeking to return to the presidency, and was shot while campaigning in Milwaukee.
Brinkley said that Roosevelt, who was shot in the chest, declared, “It takes more than a bullet to kill a Bull Moose” and “kept on speaking, delivering a stemwinder before he went to the hospital.”
“The timing of Trump, going to Milwaukee, where Theodore Roosevelt was shot – Trump has the biggest possible stage,” Brinkley said.
Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and prominent Trump critic, agreed.
“The political consequences of this assassination attempt will be immense, and they will benefit Donald Trump, who just responded to being shot in the exact same way that Teddy Roosevelt did,” Schmidt wrote on social media.
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