The bullet fired by Thomas Matthew Crooks from
a roof in Pennsylvania grazed the Republican presidential candidate’s ear. Video suggests he was saved by a head tilt seconds before.
America, warn pundits, was “one inch away from civil war”. Call this distasteful speculation if you wish, but it’s not hyperbolic. It summarises the mood on the ground and the popular memory of past catastrophes.
When people say “civil war”, they don’t mean the 1860s, when the North versus South conflict had alternative Governments and armies of thousands, but rather the 1960s – when civil unrest was triggered by assassinations and armed extremists lurked in the shadows.
Riots in the wake of the shooting of Martin Luther King jnr, in April 1968, left 43 dead, 3500 injured and 27,000 arrested. Liberals demanded reform; conservatives, law and order.
Trump and US President Joe Biden are old enough to remember those days, and their world views are shaped by them. Biden sees himself as the heir to Bobby Kennedy, himself assassinated in June 1968. Trump is likened to Richard Nixon.
Today, if either man were to die, or be killed, prior to their formal nomination at a convention, their delegates would be free to pick an alternative via a series of floor votes. Were tragedy to strike after the convention, the nominee would likely be chosen by party officials (with no guarantee that the vice-presidential candidate would fill the gap).
The Democrats last held such a brokered convention in 1968, and it descended into a battle between protesters and cops. Institutional memory of that fateful year is precisely why the current Democrat elite is reluctant to drop Biden, to take the US back to an age of anarchic politics, mob rule, and lone shooters.
Outside of a coal mine, the US presidency has proved to be the most dangerous job in the country’s history.
Four presidents have been murdered; there were two attempts to kill Gerald Ford alone (heaven knows why). Though the culprits have often been unhinged – Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin wanted to impress Jodie Foster – partisanship provides motive. Abraham Lincoln was shot by a Confederate actor; William McKinley by an anarchist at a time when that movement was as lethal as al-Qaeda.
Conspiracy theories always follow.
Supporters of Huey Long, a Trump-like populist murdered by a man with a personal grudge in 1935, dubbed their opponents the “Assassination Party”.
The precise effect of political violence depends upon the psychology of society at the time it occurs.
By 1981, America wanted to move on from the radicalism of ′68, and Congress became more determinedly collegial. Reagan, recovering in hospital, was visited by Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House – and in the most extraordinary scene, Tip fell to his knees in prayer and kissed Ronald on the forehead – rivals, yes, but also friends.
In 2024, partisanship is back in style. Both sides believe the other threatens their liberty, or that they would use unconstitutional means to stay in power.
Violence percolates to the extremes.
In 2011, Democrat Gabby Giffords was shot by a constituent; in 2017, Republican Steve Scalise was shot by a Bernie Sanders supporter at a baseball game. White supremacists marched at Charlottesville in 2017 and riots followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Then there was January 6, 2021 and the storming of the US Capitol.
Madness is stoked by disinformation: conspiracy theories around the Trump shooting now rival J.F.K. or the Moon landings.
Some say the Trump shooting was staged by the candidate himself. Others say the security was deliberately cut back to put him at risk – or the ability of the shooter to get so close indicates an inside job. Why, ask chauvinists, was he protected by a detail of women who looked overweight and unable to holster a gun?
Some Republicans have charged that the Democrats effectively put a target on Trump’s back by demonising him. “Joe Biden sent the orders,” Representative Mike Collins posted on X, formerly Twitter – although Trump has maligned his opponents plenty, too, and the political sympathies of the shooter remain unclear.
“Democrats and their allies in the media have recklessly stoked fears,” opined Senator Tim Scott. “Their inflammatory rhetoric puts lives at risk.”
If what he says is true – and if Trump had been killed – it’s easy to see how some of his supporters would feel justified in turning to violence.
Imagine a series of January 6-ers, a trail of sporadic mob violence targeting officials, journalists, election stations and perhaps the conventions.
Again, it’s happened before.
The 1995 Oklahoma bombing was carried out by a far-right activist who believed the US Government was at war with its own citizens. A revolutionary situation develops when people think the state is against them and cannot be changed through the ballot box, and the killing of a presidential candidate would, to those of extremist temperament, be final proof.
Oklahoma was inspired by the federal siege at a religious compound in Waco in 1993 – and Trump chose to hold a 2024 rally at Waco airport. He defended the January 6-ers and attacked the “abuses of power” that made this one of the most “corrupt, depraved chapters in all of American history”.
In short, Trump’s death would have pushed his country even further down a road it was already going. Many Americans hope that, having glimpsed over the cliff edge into disorder, people will now step back.
The early signs are encouraging. Condemnation of the shooting and sympathy for the Trump family has been universal.
Nikki Haley, his rival in the primaries, has agreed to speak at the Republican convention. And Trump revealed that though his original speech attacking Biden was scheduled to be another “humdinger”, he has since rewritten it with a view to national reconciliation.
“It is a chance to bring the country together,” he said. “I was given that chance.”
