The world has today woken up to the shocking news of the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. The shooting happening as the former United States President had been delivering a speech during a campaign event in Pennsylvania. I know for me, it had literally been the first thing I saw as I had woken up and looked at my phone. It is quite terrifying to think that the former President was literally centimetres away from being shot in the head and killed right there and it would be broadcast all over the world.
It is not hyperbole to say that we were potentially millimetres away from waking up to a completely different reality. The political ramifications this attack could have had across America would have been enormous. For the head of the opposition party to be killed in the months building up to an election would be a travesty in any country. For this to happen in the US, the world’s leading economic and military power, the ramifications would have had global consequences.
It would have been especially concerning if Trump were to have been killed in this attack, considering the fact that Trump is currently leading in the polls against the current US President Joe Biden. Accusations of political interference in the election have already been fledged by the former President and his supporters as Trump has had to deal with a bevy of legal cases over the course of this election. I genuinely cannot even begin to imagine what kind of reaction Trump supporters would have had to seeing their candidate assassinated.
This assassination attempt also comes just hours away from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee when Donald Trump would be officially selected as the Republican Party’s nominee for President, and his Vice-Presidential nominee would be announced.
Regardless of how one may feel about President Trump’s politics, such an action must be condemned. Acts of political violence such as this should never be accepted by anyone. The reaction from politicians and pundits alike in the United States has been good in that regard. Right from the onset, people from all across the political spectrum came out and acknowledged this terrible act and it had been rightfully condemned.
While as is the case on the internet there have been some ridiculous comments that have been shared online. Some people have been spreading conspiracy theories that the assisination attempt had been staged. Keep in mind Trump had been hit in his ear and appeared bloody as he had been dragged away by US Secret Service agents. Moreover, at least one person had been killed by the shooter and other injured. It is also worth mentioning the fact that the shooter himself was killed as well.
The odds of something like this being “staged” is so nonsensical it is almost not worth addressing such claims at all. Such claims are just evidence of how conspiracy minded so many people have become in recent years. It has come to the point where anytime anything noteworthy or concerning happens, there are always some people coming out trying to spin reality with whatever ridiculous conspiracy comes to mind.
Likewise, since we are talking about the internet there have been some who have expressed seeing nothing wrong with the attack, some have even gone as far as lamenting that the shooter missed hitting Trump in a fatal way. This I find to be the most concerning trend of all in the reaction to this assassination attempt. It puts on the display the dangerous level of political polarisation that has engulfed the United States over the last few years.
An unfortunate reality about politics is often that in order for politicians to win votes they seek to convince the electorate that they are the best candidate while at the same time demonising their opponents. Often this demonisation can take the form of fear mongering their supporters as much as possible about the dangers of their opponents taking power. They do this in order to emphasisign the biggest fears of their supporters in order to make certain that they come out in numbers to ensure their victory.
Politicians may often frame their opponents as being just plain evil and claim that their opponents winning would be a danger to their constituents way of life. They portrait every election as being an incredibly high-stakes election with everything on the line. This sort of rhetoric only serves to cause division within society.
This happens everywhere, not just in the United States. A recent example of this comes from France. After the National Rally party managed to win a majority of votes in the first round of the election, political parties from the centre and left of France began sounding the alarm about the dangers of the “far-right” taking power of the French parliament. Many on social media even felt comfortable enough to compare them to Nazis. And this fear mongering strategy worked as the National Rally failed to win the election after parties from the left and the centre united to keep them out.
Perhaps rather ironically, Donald Trump himself is arguably guilty of this sort of politics as well. Throughout this campaign he has regularly claimed that Joe Biden is “destroying” America and argued that the country cannot survive four more years of the Biden administration. He undoubtedly has also played a major role in the great divisions we are witnessing in the US right now. And as we have seen in this assassination attempt, sometimes this sort of rhetoric can serve to radicalise people into thinking political violence is acceptable.
It just so happened to be that Donald Trump was at the end of an attempt on his life as a result of political violence. Throughout the last decade that Donald Trump has been in the mainstream, he has similarly been demonised and vilified. He has been called a threat to democracy, a racist, even been compared to Hitler and all sorts of other terrible things. While some would argue that those labels are in some cases justified, this sort of rhetoric has undoubtebly been a major source of the divisions within America.
As a result of this type of framing of Donald Trump, there are many who view Trump as being the most evil person alive right now and the idea of him winning re-election scares them to death because of the narrative they have been fed. That fear can lead people to do terrible things, as we have just witnessed. While it can be a source of motivation for people to vote, it can also lead people into thinking that they need to take things into their own hands to prevent a politician they see as evil, in this case Trump, from gaining power.
While I have in the past written about how Trump does pose a threat to American democracy, I also believe such divisive rhetoric from politicians is bad. When elections are painted as being these existential events and society becomes so polarised this is not healthy for a democracy. All this does is ratchet up the anger and division within society until it finally reaches its breaking point and American politics is edging closer and closer to that each election cycle, it seems.
Though I am not an American, I do find this trend to be concerning for America, as well as in many countries around the world. All in all, even if I may not agree with everything the former US President does, I am happy that Donald Trump managed to survive this assassination attempt. It is good for him and his family especially, who would have lost a husband and a father, if the attempt on Trump’s life had been successful. Moreover, it is good for American democracy. The ramifications of the Republican nominee being assassinated months before a general election would have had drastic consequences in Amercians’ faith in their democratic institutions.
Any idea that such an act should be seen as a good thing is completely unacceptable. I am happy to see so many people across the political spectrum in the US rightfully stating that fact. So I hope President Trump managed to fully recover and I hope America is able to use this moment to really reflect on their current political reality and the deep polarisation that has taken root over the last decade especially.