People sit in a local bar near the Fiserv Forum watching news ahead of the 2024 Republican National Convention, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Milwaukee. Former president Donald Trump was whisked off the stage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania after apparent gunshots rang through the crowd.
| Photo Credit: AP

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump by a gunman at his Pennsylvania rally has confirmed the worst fears of public figures warning that an escalation in incendiary political rhetoric on all sides could lead to bloodshed.

U.S. lawmakers and analysts have been voicing concern since the 2021 US Capitol riot that increasingly bellicose campaign language was becoming a worrying contusion on the U.S. body politic ahead of November’s presidential election.

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The danger was vividly illustrated in 2022, when then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked with a hammer by a far-right conspiracy theorist who wanted to hold the Democratic leader hostage and “break her kneecaps.”

The political affiliations of Saturday’s shooter, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, were not immediately clear — but analysts and politicians immediately pointed the finger at extreme political discourse.

“For weeks Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” House Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who was seriously wounded in a mass shooting at a congressional sports event in 2017, said on X.

“Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”

Senior Trump campaign aide Chris LaCivita assailed the language of “leftist activists, Democrat donors and even Joe Biden.”

While Ajamu Baraka, Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s running mate in 2016, suggested Democratic rhetoric might have led the gunman to see it as his “patriotic duty to eliminate an existential threat to the nation.”

“The chickens have really come home to roost,” he posted on X.

Private security

What none of the three acknowledged was that Trump himself has been a major architect of the coarsening in US political discourse in recent years.

Many of Trump’s targets in Congress and the government — from Republican Senator Mitt Romney to retired top government scientist Anthony Fauci — have disclosed having to take on private security after threats from Trump’s supporters.

The former US president sparked fury last year when he implied that the country’s top military officer should be executed, and joked about the Pelosi hammer attack.

Trump’s exhortations to violence are nothing new — he suggested that protesters should be “roughed up” at a rally in 2016, and that looters should be shot during the 2020 racial protests over the police murder of George Floyd.

He has also repeatedly described the attorneys leading the multiple civil and criminal cases he faces as “monster,” “deranged” and “psycho.”

And, of course, many argue he incited the deadly Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, when he exhorted his followers to “fight like hell” shortly before they stormed the seat of US government, leaving five people dead.

Republicans have in the past accused Democrats of overreacting to figurative language and ignoring leftist aggression, such as harassment of conservative Supreme Court justices and the 2017 shooting that wounded Scalise.

Still, law enforcement agencies say that while threats have proliferated from every corner, right-wing violence is the bigger worry.

‘Attack on our democracy’

Discourse that was once taboo is now commonplace on the far right, with Republican flamethrowers in Congress incorporating violent language and imagery into their stump speeches.

Threats against members of Congress of all stripes reached a record high of 9,625 in 2021, according to data provided by the Capitol Police, compared with just 3,939 in 2017.

Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has conducted several polls on political violence since the Capitol assault. In his latest last month, 10 percent of respondents said the use of force was “justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.”

“The shooting of former President Trump is a consequence of such significant support for political violence in our country,” he told AFP.

“We also need to worry about threat in retribution to President Biden. Our survey shows seven percent of American adults — 18 million — support force to restore Trump to the presidency, half of whom own guns.”

Political analyst Charlie Kolean called for Americans to stand together “in condemning such violence and work towards ensuring the safety and security of all public officials.”

“Today’s events are a stark reminder of the threats our leaders face,” Kolean, the chief strategy officer at conservative-leaning political consultancy RED PAC, told AFP.

“An attack on the presidential candidate is an attack on our democracy.”

New Delhi:

US President Joe Biden and his Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, clashed in their first debate of the 2024 presidential election cycle. With no live audience present, the two candidates did not greet each other with a customary handshake and stood just feet apart at their respective podiums, setting the stage for a night of pointed exchanges.

On Economy

President Biden wasted no time in criticising Trump’s economic legacy during the latter’s tenure in the Oval Office. “Donald Trump left me an economy that was in free fall,” Biden stated. He then slammed Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. “He said things were fine during the pandemic- just inject a little bleach in your arm. I turned our country around,” Biden claimed. 

In another sharp rebuke, Biden highlighted job losses under Trump’s administration, stating, “Donald Trump is the only president besides Herbert Hoover who left office with fewer jobs than when he began. Donald Trump had the largest national debt of any US president over a four-year period.”

On Foreign Policy

The debate took a heated turn when the topic shifted to foreign policy, specifically the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Trump seized the opportunity to criticise Biden’s execution of the withdrawal, calling it “the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life.” 

“I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we were getting out with dignity, with strength, with power” he added. 

Biden responded by saying, “When he was president they were still killing people in Afghanistan. He didn’t do anything about that.” 

Referring to allegations that Trump had labeled these soldiers as “suckers,” Biden invoked the memory of his late son Beau, who served in Iraq and later succumbed to cancer.

“My son was not a loser, was not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser,” Biden declared.

On Immigration

Immigration was another hot-button issue during the debate. Biden accused Trump of exaggerating and spreading falsehoods about the state of the country’s immigration crisis. “The idea that illegal immigrants are being welcomed in the United States is simply not true,” Biden said. “There’s no data to support what he said. Once again, he’s exaggerating. He’s lying.”

Trump countered by claiming that Biden had failed to secure the southern US border, which he claimed had allowed scores of criminals into the country. “I call it Biden migrant crime,” Trump declared.

On Abortion Rights

The debate took a heated turn when Biden attacked Trump for being an advocate for abortion ban. He called Trump’s actions “a terrible thing” after the Republican boasted of nominating Supreme Court justices that helped overturn Roe v. Wade. “It has been a terrible thing, what you have done,” Biden said, in one of his firmer critiques of his presidential predecessor.

Trump defended his position by arguing that returning the issue to the states was the right course of action and accused Biden of not supporting any limits on abortions.

Addressing the plight of women who have been raped and now face greater obstacles in accessing abortion services, Biden added, “It’s just ridiculous, and they can do nothing about it. You have the morals of an alley cat.”