AP Photo
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is helped off the stage by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Monday, July 15, 2024 | 2 a.m.
MILWAUKEE — The assassination attempt of Donald Trump on Saturday at his rally in Pennsylvania plunged the 2024 presidential race into a state of shock and uncertainty.
President Joe Biden’s campaign raced to pull his television ads off the airwaves nationwide and paused all official outbound communications — no fundraising appeals, no news releases. An internal Biden campaign edict asked all staff members to “refrain from issuing any comments on social media or in public,” as did similar internal guidance from the Trump campaign.
Biden, who was in church at the time of the shooting, condemned the violence as “sick” in a brief address to the nation from a local police department in Delaware, changing plans and returning to the White House after midnight. He and Trump spoke late Saturday, a call that a White House official described as “good, respectful and brief.”
Trump issued his own graphic recounting of the searing moment in a social media post — “I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin” — as he returned to New Jersey before the Republican National Convention that officials said would continue as planned on Monday in Milwaukee.
“I will Never Surrender!” Trump wrote in a text message to supporters.
His top two advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, wrote in a public statement on Saturday night that Trump would still be joining his supporters at the convention. And in an internal message to Trump campaign staff, they wrote that they were “enhancing the armed security presence with 24/7 officers on-site” at both the Washington and West Palm Beach, Florida, campaign offices.
LaCivita, in a text message early Sunday, said the assassination attempt would not alter convention planning.
“Changes nothing,” he said.
Of course, the shooting did change the complexion of the race. But in the immediate aftermath, questions surrounding how it will play out politically generated far more speculation than answers. What was certain is that the nation was confronting anew the ugly and rising tide of violence in American politics.
The shooting came at what already felt like a deeply consequential crossroads in a 2024 campaign that has had its fair share of them. Trump this year became the first former president convicted of felonies. Biden has been besieged by his fellow Democrats as the party’s standard-bearer ever since a faltering debate more than two weeks ago. And Trump is preparing to name his running mate and formally claim his party’s nomination for the third consecutive election.
But all of that paled in comparison to the first shooting of a current or former president since Ronald Reagan in 1981.
“America, the fabric of our gentle nation is tattered,” Melania Trump, the former first lady, said in a rare public statement Sunday.
The photographs of Trump rising back up after the shooting were indelible: His face bloodied, one hand high in defiance, the other clutching a red “Make America Great Again” hat, the American flag flying in the background. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Trump mouthed as he pumped his fist in the air.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley suggested that those images would, for many voters, overwrite any sullying of Trump as a felon with a new picture of him “as the wounded martyr of Butler, Pennsylvania.”
Brinkley, a professor at Rice University who has been critical of Trump in the past, pointed to his presence of mind in the minutes after he was wounded.
“Many people would have been much more shaken,” he said. “Trump realized it was a chance to be a profile of courage.”
He added: “It is a huge boost for his presidential campaign in a grim and surreal way.”
Some Republicans celebrated the fist-raised photographs as raw symbols of his strength and instinct. “Trump’s chances of losing just went to zero,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, wrote on the social platform X.
Trump and other allies rushed to suggest divine intervention. A series of photographs from The New York Times appeared to capture the bullet that struck Trump, his wincing and then finding blood on his hands after touching his ear.
His daughter-in-law Lara Trump, whom he appointed co-chair of the Republican National Committee, posted a rendering of what appears to be Jesus holding Donald Trump’s shoulders on Instagram with the caption, “Fear not for I am with you.”
On Sunday, Trump himself posted on Truth Social: “It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
The shooting was refracted through the lens of politics almost instantly. Some Republicans blamed Democrats or the news media for stoking hatred and fear of Trump. Federal law enforcement officials had identified the gunman early Sunday but not a motive.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, who is on the shortlist of candidates whom Trump is considering as a running mate, wrote on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Biden, who ran for president hoping to heal some of the nation’s deep divisions, said Saturday evening that “there is no place in America for this kind of violence.”
“It’s one of the reasons why we have to unite this country,” he said. “We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”
It was unclear how the shooting would affect Biden’s intensive efforts to reunite his party behind him after a faltering debate performance that raised questions about his mental acuity and competence as a campaigner. Could the shooting, for instance, slow the attempts to remove him as nominee, as the party waited to see if the president could play the role of uniter-in-chief in a crisis?
Biden addressed the nation from the White House midday on Sunday and announced that he would speak from the Oval Office in the evening. He is also scheduled to sit for a nationally televised interview on Monday with Lester Holt on NBC, though he canceled a planned trip to Texas.
“An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation,” Biden said. “Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that now.”
After a Thursday news conference meant to reassure wavering Democrats, Biden had spent Friday and Saturday making his case to various factions of his party in a series of private meetings.
“We spoke frankly to the president about our concerns and asked tough questions about the path forward,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, after the group met with Biden on Saturday. She pointedly did not offer an endorsement.
Most Democrats, who have repeatedly warned that Trump’s return to the White House would be an existential threat to the nation, followed Biden’s lead in silencing their attacks on Trump and condemning the shooting.
The number of top elected officials who have experienced political violence was a stark reminder of the increasing fragility of peaceful democracy in America.
A violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to block the certification of the last election in 2020, and Trump has been indicted over his role in trying to overturn the election.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose husband was attacked inside their home in San Francisco in 2022, said Saturday that, “As one whose family has been the victim of political violence, I know firsthand that political violence of any kind has no place in our society. I thank God that former President Trump is safe.”
Former Rep. Gabby Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who was shot in the head more than a decade ago in an assassination attempt, said in a statement, “Political violence is un-American and is never acceptable — never.”
And Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House majority leader who was shot in 2017 when a gunman opened fire on Republican members of the congressional baseball team during a practice, was among those who cast blame on Democrats.
“It’s been an all-out assault on Donald Trump the person for years now and it adds up,” Scalise said on Fox News, warning of the “hypercharged rhetoric on the left.”
One spectator was killed in the shooting Saturday and two others were critically wounded. Aides said Trump had authorized a GoFundMe page for victims that quickly zoomed past $700,000 raised.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said House Republicans would immediately conduct an investigation into the Secret Service, calling the director, as well as other top Homeland Security and FBI officials, to testify. He also sought in an interview on NBC to “turn the rhetoric down.”
“We’ve got to turn the temperature down in this country,” Johnson said.
Christine Toretti, a Republican National committeeperson who attended the Butler rally, had met with Trump beforehand, bringing along the 95-year-old mother of a man being held in a Russian prison for a marijuana infraction.
“I thought, gee, this is a good thing I did today even though it is hot as hell,” Toretti recalled thinking as the rally began. Trump had assured Malphine Fogel, who lives in Butler County, that he would help get her son home.
Then the bullets rang out.
“I thought I was in a dream and it seemed like it went slow motion,” she said, recalling that Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., tried to cover them as the shooting unfolded.
“A lot of people were saying, ‘Is this the way our country is going? Why do we treat each other the way we do?’” she said. “We need to be better than who we are right now.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
