When I was living in the US in the early 1980s, I was two blocks away down Connecticut Avenue in Washington DC when President Reagan was shot and I was staying with friends in New York opposite the entrance to the Dakota Building where and when John Lennon was murdered.
This is not to suggest that there is or was some kind of Curse of Boulton but merely to remind those tempted to suggest that the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at the weekend, horrible as it was, tells us anything about worsening trends in America. Those on either side, Republican or Democrat, who have tried to score political points from the event have disgraced themselves. Regrettably, they include Trump’s Vice President pick, JD Vance, as well as former Vice Presidential hopeful, Tim Scott, and Elon Musk.Â
Violence against politicians and other prominent figures is not new. Its consequences are particular to the circumstances when it occurs. As President Biden says there should be “no place” for it in democratic society.
So far, both of this year’s candidates have risen to the occasion. Donald Trump publicly thanked Biden for his sympathy phone call. Trump is rewriting his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to incorporate the theme of “unity”, one that chimes with Biden’s post-attack broadcasts from the Oval Office.
The convention will be an early test of whether Trump sticks to this markedly different approach from the course he has taken ever since his 2016 “American carnage” inauguration speech. Even before then he was hinting with approval at violent action against opponents. At a rally in 2016, the same candidate who has just survived an assassination attempt suggested that “maybe there is something” that “Second Amendment people” – the right to bear arms lobby – “can do” about his opponent Hilary Clinton.
There is an “only in America” aspect to the attack in Butler, PA. Five American presidents have died by the bullet: Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F Kennedy. Several others survived attacks. Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt were shot. FDR was shot at and, as with Trump this weekend, a bystander was killed. Squeaky Fromm, an acolyte of Charles Manson, served decades in prison for pulling the trigger on the mild mannered Gerald Ford – she had ejected a bullet from the chamber beforehand.
In 1968, which happens to be the last year when the Democrats held their convention in Chicago with their nominee in doubt as they plan again this August, candidate Robert F Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King junior were assassinated.
The ubiquity of firearms in the US, made worse in recent decades by high-tech assault weapons is surely a reason for this appallingly high death toll. On Saturday, Trump escaped death by inches and the turn of a head, but two other people including the shooter, died in the crossfire, with two further bystanders critically injured.
Sebastien Gorka, a former Trump aide and pro-gun conspiracy theorist, argued angrily in an interview with me that the Democrats were responsible for the Trump attacker and that he could just as easily have used a brick. There are no records of US presidents being assassinated by brick.
Rampages in Dunblane, Hungerford and, most recently, Southampton have shown that this country is not immune from mass killings when firearms fall into unstable hands. These events led British parliamentarians to toughen bans on weapons. There is no expectation that there will be moves to strengthen gun control in the US following Trump’s injury from an AR-15, purchased by the shooter’s father.
With chilling familiarity, American commentators I spoke to were quick to identify the twenty-year-old would-be assassin as a “high school shooter” type: an alienated but quiet young man with few friends and no relationships, and with a deep fascination with weapons. The security forces “neutralised” him while he was wearing a t-shirt for “Demolition Ranch”,a YouTube channel dedicated to guns and weapons training.
An AP photographer looking upwards to the rally stage captured what may well become the iconic image of this election campaign: the wounded Trump, blood streaming across his face, raising his fist in defiance against a clear blue sky and a fluttering stars-and-stripes. Trump looks strong in contrast to the feeble old man he is competing against. The picture is bound to feature at the Republican Convention, probably outselling Trump’s Georgia police mugshot. He is likely to get a popularity bump in the polls just like Ronald “Honey, I forgot to duck” Reagan.
Reagan’s surge did not last long although he was re-elected three years later. Over the next few days, Trump’s drama will take pressure off the blundering Biden to quit. In a week or so however, should the Republicans look unassailably on course for the White House, then Democratic efforts to oust Biden may reach crisis point.
Trump runs a risk if he tries to turn down his angry rhetoric. A change of gear could also yield great political dividends. If he tones it down, he may alienate those who have had the stomach to cheer him so far. But they have nowhere else to go with their presidential votes and will certainly not switch to Biden. The danger for Trump is that his electoral appeal will be reduced to his MAGA base if he continues now with the divisive, mocking rabble-rousing which comes easily to him. He will alienate the majority of the electorate who have been profoundly shaken by the violence last weekend and might otherwise feel sympathetic.
Conversely, Trump the Unifier could win over some centrist and uncertain voters and start to draw a veil over his long record of hateful remarks and his vengeful plans for his administration should he be inaugurated 47th president of the US in 2025.
These voters would never endorse the man who continues to say that the armed mob who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021 are “unbelievable patriots” , the man who urges protesters at his rallies to be carried out on a stretcher, who mocked Nancy Pelosi’s husband when he was attacked with a hammer, who sped up executions to empty federal death row before he left office, and who once boasted: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”.
They might back a Mark II Trump if they forget what he used to be as he gradually shifts his presentation into tough but fair father of the nation mode: the only real choice against a weak opponent.
The shooter last weekend may well fit into a tragically familiar American template of someone who has no greater ambition than to vent his resentment and get his name in the headlines by shooting other people.
If he bore specific hatred towards Trump, he will have changed political history in a way he could not have anticipated, just like all those who pulled triggers before him.
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