 "Will the shooting create a ‘Trump Bump’ in the 2024 US presidential elections?")
In election cycles, commentators often talk about “moments”: moments that define a candidate’s run; a moment when a candidate lost the race and so on.
On Saturday night, the assassination attempt on former US President and the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump at an election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — a gunman with an AR-15 rifle opened fire, leaving the former president with a grazed ear and killing another bystander — is a moment that may have sealed this election cycle for the 78-year-old.
After all, one can’t ignore that image of Donald Trump with blood oozing from his ear, with his fist raised being escorted off stage by a swarm of Secret Service agents.
So, the question now everyone is asking is: Will this moment and Trump’s response exalt him in the eyes of voters? Will it help Trump or hinder him in his effort to become US president again?
What happened on Saturday?
Days before the crucial Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during which Trump is expected to secure the party’s nomination, the 78-year-old was in Butler, Pennsylvania to address a campaign rally.
While addressing his many supporters from the stage, multiple shots rang out at the rally, including one that Trump said skimmed his ear. Trump ducked to the ground. Five Secret Service agents rushed to the stage and covered the former president, as the pop-pop from two additional bursts of gunfire rang out across the Butler Farm Show grounds.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsCNN reports that 43 seconds after the first shot was fired, a Secret Service agent said the gunman, later identified to be 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks , was down. Trump, his ear and face bloodied, was brought to his feet. He then stood up and pumped his fist in a defiant pose, moments before agents took him off the stage and into his SUV. Audio from the rally has captured Trump at one moment even saying: “Let me get my shoes on.”
The incident drew worldwide condemnation. His rival at the polls, US President Joe Biden even made a rare address from the Oval Office in which he called for a cooling of temperatures around political debate. He added that US politics “must never be a literal battlefield, God forbid a killing field.”
How could the assassination bid help Trump?
Following the shooting, many political pundits and observers believe that the shooting and the emerging image of Trump will be a political boon for him in the November polls.
Indeed, billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of social media site X and a powerful influence, immediately endorsed Trump after the July 13 shooting.
Veteran former Clinton campaign consultant, Dick Morris suggested that the assassination attempt on Trump would help the Republicans in the November elections. In a podcast with WABV, he said: “Functionally, the race is over. [Trump] wins if he lives. … There’s nothing that can get into Trump’s path except a bullet.”
He further noted that the shooting would garner the Republicans 10-15 more points than the Democrats.
Jennifer Mercieca, an expert on American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University, told Politico: “He is a visual guy, and his main personal visual language is projecting strength.
“The visual display of strength is everything for a ‘strong man,’ and Trump’s whole campaign is built around it.”
Roger Stone, an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist, also told Politico, “Trump instinctively understands the significance of the visual image. His insistence on demonstrating to the crowd yesterday that he was unbroken and unhurt, and that his fight for America will continue was both instinctive and brilliant.”
“The iconic shot of Trump standing with his fist in the air, blood coming down the side of his head, and the flag draped just perfectly over him is really driving the narrative,” James Davis, a Republican strategist, told Al Jazeera. “He’s going to be seen sympathetically after this from the national narrative,” he said.
Many believe that it will also invigorate and revitalise Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) voter base. Pundits have said that the assassination attempt on Trump will be a lightning shock of attention that will make his base rally to his side and ensure they’ll turn out at the polls.
His MAGA supporters saw him as a political martyr, battling through several criminal charges and now the assassination will only make him more loved and revered. As Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote on social media: “Trump is unstoppable.”
This sentiment was echoed by Rob Casey, an analyst at Signum Global Advisors, a policy analysis group. He was quoted by the Financial Times as saying: “The event has the potential to increase former president Trump’s support by highlighting his vigour, motivating his base, and eliciting sympathy.”
The shooting will also help Trump as the Democrats will tone down their attacks on him for the time being. On the other hand, some of Trump’s allies and supporters have already indulged in the blame game, pointing fingers at the “the left”, the media, the Democratic party and even Biden himself.
Some commentators such as Eric Levitz note that the shooting may expand the Republicans’ advantage among low-trust voters.
AFP further notes that the shooting plays into Trump’s grievance narrative about Democrats being out to get his support base. As David Axelrod, former White House strategist, told CNN that Trump would be “greeted as a kind of martyr”.
**Also read: Donald Trump assassination bid: Did Secret Service ignore warnings of a gunman?**Will it really make much of a difference?
Shortly after the shooting, there were two conflicting ideas: one stating that the event would help Trump; the other, being that it won’t really make a difference.
Some political commentators believe that with the elections being four months away — in November — other events will consume the news and people may relegate the incident to the back of their minds.
According to a VOX report, polling in this race hasn’t moved much throughout the campaign. Biden’s bad debate — one of the most dramatic events of the cycle — only lowered his standing in national polling averages by about two points.
Moreover, very little is known about the gunman’s motives. This makes it difficult to shape political narratives.
Robert Spitzer, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland, said Trump could get a temporary boost, but he did not expect it to carry through to November. “So you would expect Trump’s candidacy to have a post-convention booster bump. And that may be a little higher because of this assassination attempt. But I think in the space of a few weeks, the relative poll standing of Trump and President Joe Biden will even out to where they have been in the last month or two,” he told RFE/RL.
According to Matthew Dallek, a professor of political history, historically politicians who get shot don’t earn that much sympathy to turn an election. Speaking to RFE/RL, he said: “ Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning for the presidency in 1912 yet still lost. An assassination attempt on President Harry Truman in 1950 did not prevent his Democratic Party from losing big in the midterms later that year. Two assassination attempts were made on President Gerald Ford’s life in 1975. He still lost the presidential election a year later.”
Will the shooting spur more violence?
Whether or not the shooting helps or hinders Trump is being debated, but most agree that this moment will shape the remaining election campaign.
Many fear that the assassination attempt won’t be the last of the violence this campaign witnesses. “Violence typically begets violence, right? It’s not like there’s a violent attack, and then all of a sudden, things quiet down. So I think the attack kind of pushes the country into a more dangerous place over the next few months and years,” Dallek opined.
And if social media is to be believed, then more violence is right around the corner. Many far-right communities lit up with calls for violence, retribution, and civil war in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
“I guess they really do want war,” a member of the pro-Trump message board known as The Donald wrote on Saturday evening in a post that has since been deleted.
Another wrote: “Let’s give it to them.” One other user went one step further and wrote: “CIVIL.F*****G.WAR. I’m ready to be done with this f*****g s**t from Democrats.”
On The Donald, users were also calling for all Democrats to be rounded up. “War now,” the user wrote. “They don’t want to live and let live. We need to finish what should have been done after the civil war: eradicate and eliminate all Democrats and anyone who even thinks of being a Democrat.”
It’s frightening to note what happens next, but one thing is unfortunately certain: The Trump rally shooting has reshaped the US elections and how.
With inputs from agencies
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