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Trump rally shooting: Shockwaves of political violence in a divided nation
In an election year already fraught with division and divisiveness, the shooting at a Trump campaign rally over the weekend has irrevocably altered the US presidential race.
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A memorial for volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore is displayed on July 14, 2024 at the Buffalo Township Fire Company 27 station in Buffalo Township, Pennsylvania. Comperatore was killed by gunfire on Saturday while attending the campaign rally of Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
T
he attempted assassination of former United States president Donald Trump over the weekend opens a dark new chapter in that country’s cursed story of political violence, shaking a nation already deeply divided during one of the tensest periods in its political history.
Targeting a former president at a campaign rally just days before he accepts the Republican nomination is, by definition, an attack on democracy and the right of each American to choose their leader.
Trump, the presumptive Grand Old Party (GOP) nominee, was on stage, as usual with supporters wearing “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) regalia holding up posters in the bleachers behind him, when shots rang out. Trump flinched, then grabbed the side of his face and disappeared behind the podium as people started screaming and the surreal nature of what was happening began to dawn.
The ex-president later said he felt a bullet rip through the skin of his ear, which poured with blood as he was rushed from the scene. The shots fired by the gunman, who was positioned on a roof outside the perimeter of his rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, came a fraction of an inch from being a lot worse.
While Trump is not a serving president, this assassination attempt underscores the ever-present threat hanging over the office, those running for it and especially those who claim it.
President Joe Biden is the 46th US president, and four of his predecessors have been killed while in office, most recently John F. Kennedy in 1963. The attack on Trump ends the 40-year period during which many assumed that the Secret Service’s expertise had greatly reduced the potential for such incidents, and will cast a pall lasting years.
The targeting of Trump during at a campaign rally has drawn comparisons to the assassination of Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, a blood-soaked year that also saw the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which will host the same event this year. But political violence hasn’t stopped since then.
