The Attempted Assassination of President Donald Trump Part I (of III)

When President Ronald Reagan was shot by an attention-seeking drifter in 1981, the country united behind its injured leader. The teary-eyed Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., went to the hospital room of the Republican president, held his hands, kissed his head and got on his knees to pray for him.

But the assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump seems more likely to tear America further apart than to bring it together. Within minutes of the shooting, the air was filled with anger, bitterness, suspicion and recrimination. Fingers were pointed, conspiracy theories advanced and a country already bristling with animosity fractured even more.

The fact that the shooting in Butler, Pa., on Saturday night was two days before Republicans were set to gather in Milwaukee for their nominating convention invariably put the event in a partisan context. While Democrats bemoaned political violence, which they have long faulted Mr. Trump for encouraging, Republicans instantly blamed President Biden and his allies for the attack, which they argued stemmed from incendiary language labeling the former president a proto-fascist who would destroy democracy.

Mr. Trump’s eldest son, his campaign strategist and a running mate finalist all attacked the political left within hours of the shooting even before the gunman was identified or his motive determined. “Well of course they tried to keep him off the ballot, they tried to put him in jail and now you see this,” wrote Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the former president.

But the Trump campaign seemed to think better of it, and the post was deleted. A memo sent out on Sunday by Mr. LaCivita and Susie Wiles, another senior adviser, instructed Trump team members not to comment on the shooting.

Either way, the episode could fuel Mr. Trump’s narrative about being the victim of persecution by Democrats. Impeached, indicted, sued and convicted, Mr. Trump even before Saturday had accused Democrats of seeking to have him shot by F.B.I. agents or even executed for crimes that do not carry the death penalty.

After being wounded at the rally, Mr. Trump, with blood staining his face, pumped his fist at the crowd and shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

What exactly drove the gunman, who was quickly killed by Secret Service counter snipers, remained a matter of speculation. Identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, from Bethel Park, Pa., he was a registered Republican but had also given $15 to a progressive group on Mr. Biden’s Inauguration Day, more than three years ago. The authorities said they were still investigating his motive.

The shooting came at a time when the United States was already deeply polarized along ideological, cultural and partisan lines — split, it often seems, into two countries, even two realities. More than at any time in generations, Americans do not see themselves in a collective enterprise but perceive themselves on opposite sides of modern ramparts.

The divisions have grown so stark that a Marist poll in May found that 47 percent of Americans considered a second civil war likely or very likely in their lifetime, a notion that prompted Hollywood to release a movie imagining what that could look like.

The propulsive crescendo of disruptive events lately has led many to compare 2024 to 1968, a year of racial strife, riots in the cities and the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Protests over the Vietnam War helped prompt President Lyndon B. Johnson to drop out of his race for re-election that year.

Until now, there had been one important difference. “Of all the similarities between 1968 and 2024, the lack of political violence this year has been one of the key areas where the years diverge,” said Luke A. Nichter, a historian at Chapman University and the author of “The Year That Broke Politics,” a history of 1968. “That is no more.”

Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, said political violence had a long history in America. “As in 1968 — or 1919 or 1886 or 1861 — the violence that just occurred is rather inevitable in a society as bitterly divided as ours,” he said. “And of course there’s actually less violence in politics now than there was in those other years.”

Republicans turned the tables on Democrats this weekend, arguing that if Mr. Trump was responsible for provocative rhetoric, then Mr. Biden should be as well. Speaking with donors on Monday, the president said he wanted to stop talking about his poor debate performance and instead “put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” He described his strategy as “attack, attack, attack.”

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio and a front-runner to be named Mr. Trump’s running mate, wrote on social media two hours after the attack on Saturday. “That rhetoric directly led to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

 

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