After a remarkable two weeks that have altered the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump will reemerge after an attempted assassination as an even larger legendary hero of his MAGA movement. On Monday, the Republican National Convention will begin.
The horrific events of Saturday are still slowly but surely settling into a new national trauma, even after more than 24 hours have passed. In spite of this, Joe Biden and the former president are already planning how to deal with the political fallout.
On Monday morning, another shocking event occurred when a Florida district court dismissed the case against special counsel Jack Smith, who had been investigating Trump’s handling of secret papers at his Mar-a-Lago estate. As the convention begins, the ex-shock president’s move cleared his name in one of the four pending criminal charges, a major win for his candidacy. Apart from his hush money conviction in New York, it further establishes that he will evade legal responsibility until November’s election.
Just as the nation was reeling from Saturday’s terrible events, Trump’s legal dramas took a new turn.
With all the historical references that an assassination attempt against a presidential candidate brings to mind, the prospect of further violence is understandable given the poisonous political climate of the past decade, which has been steadily worsening.
Tragically, a former president and an American citizen lost their lives while exercising their right to vote for the candidate they believed in. During his statement from the Oval Office on Sunday night, Biden urged a united people to stay calm and refused to go down this path in America. Corey Comperatore, a father and firefighter, died at a Trump event while protecting his family; the president paid tribute to him and the other Americans killed in political violence.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told AWN, “It’s a dark time in the history of the country,” adding his voice to the chorus of voices urging wisdom. Today is a time of great peril. Furthermore, we have been advocating for a concerted effort by all elected authorities, beginning with the president, to unite the nation. We must convey a cohesive message. We should lower the thermostat.
The former president, in his first interview following his assassination attempt, promised that Thursday’s Republican National Convention keynote speech will be “a lot different” than his 2017 inaugural address, which was supposed to be an update on his “American carnage” speech.
A chance to unite the entire nation, if not the entire planet, is at hand, Trump told Washington Examiner reporter Salena Zito.
A presidential election that had, despite its peculiarities, been a fairly steady slog between two unpopular candidates—neither of whom the people really wanted—has been rewritten in the seismic two weeks after the AWN debate.
After narrowly escaping an assassin’s gunshot, Trump would show up at a convention to accept the Republican nomination for a third consecutive term, attracting the support of those who saw him in an almost supernatural light. His grip on power within his party will be further solidified by the horrific events of the last weekend. Also, voters in battleground states will be looking to see if his growing lead is bolstered by their sympathy for what happened.
Biden, on the other hand, has spent the past two weeks attempting to preserve his own nomination, following his disastrous Atlanta debate performance, which revealed his age-related problems and caused Democrats to fear that he will give Trump the presidency and the Republican Party a stranglehold on power in Washington. With the nation reeling from a sudden crisis and Biden stepping into the position of leader, the intraparty rebellion against him may take a back seat for the time being due to the outcry over the Trump assassination attempt.
Only the oldest Americans can remember the political killings that occurred in the 1960s; those who were alive during the 1981 attempt on President Reagan’s life are now in their mid-thirties. As a result, millions of individuals who have already lived through political paroxysms in the past few years are now confronting the terrifying and subsequent feeling that their nation is spinning out of control.
Politics, however, will forever occupy a void—particularly in the aftermath of a political tragedy—regardless of the recent shock. Truly, Trump’s act of defiance—as shown in photos of him clutching his fist and with blood splattered over his face as the Secret Service escorted him offstage on Saturday—will undoubtedly shape his professional and personal trajectory.
On Sunday, Trump told The New York Post, “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen.” “Indeed, they are correct; I survived. To have an iconic photo, you usually have to die.
How voters will react to the shocking events at Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania rally and the president’s promise to remain in office until January 2029 despite his debate performance are questions that remain unanswered at this early stage. How the campaign develops, however, will depend critically on the choices each man makes and the tone he aims to convey in the days ahead.
Almost certainly, one aspect of the election will remain unchanged. The fundamental vote for Biden and Trump was likely already cast in a country that was profoundly split. The nation’s destiny, and the fate of the White House specifically, may rest in the hands of tens of thousands of voters in a small number of swing states.