The attack on former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump has shocked the country, and will have immense consequences on the presidential campaign as well. in progress, already not without twists and turns. The first to grasp its significance was, and instantly, the lens of 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks: the image of Trump, with blood dripping from his ear onto his face and his fist raised in a sign of struggle as he was carried off the stage immediately after the shooting, with an American flag waving above him, is the iconic photo that has already gone viral and is bouncing around social media.
The fact that the attack occurred two days before the opening of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee is yet another detail that plays into the former president’s hands.who will soon have a huge stage from which to launch his message, in the guise of the surviving victim, and galvanize his base. The attack will have an impact not only on security but on the ‘climate’ that will be felt at the mega rally in Wisconsin.
«There is something in the American spirit that likes to see fortitude and courage under pressure and Trump with his fist raised will become a new symbol. When you survive an assassination attempt, you become a martyr, because you get a wave of public sympathy,” commented Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, to the Washington Post, noting the similarities with what happened to former President Theodore Roosevelt, who was shot in Milwaukee in 1912 while campaigning in an attempt to return to the White House.
“Trump’s timing: going to Milwaukee, where Theodore Roosevelt was shot…has the biggest stage possible.”Brinkley stressed. Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist, is also convinced of this, according to whom «the political consequences of this assassination attempt will be immense and will benefit Donald Trump, who reacted to the shooting in exactly the same way that Teddy Roosevelt did». The latter, however, lost the 1912 elections to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
A scenario that Joe Biden is probably clinging to, which risks suffering the backlash: the head of the White House and Democratic candidate was trying to recover ground after the last difficult weeks, due to the horrible performance in the debate with Trump, and this attack, with the wave of emotion and empathy that it has provoked towards the challenger, will certainly not help him.
Complicating the situation are his words spoken in recent days in a private phone call with donors – “Enough talk about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in the center of the target” – already in the dock. Some, like GOP Representative Mike Collins, wrote on X that “Joe Biden gave the orders” and should be charged with “incitement to assassination.”