WASHINGTON – WASHINGTON (AP) — “Tone it down!”
That was the appeal of a Republican congressman as he faced the assassination attempt against donald trump at a political rally in the Butler Farm area where he grew up.
“I am perplexed about how and what happened to the United States of America,” Rep. Mike Kelly, R-PA., told the Associated Press on Sunday morning.
The shocking attempt on Trump’s life has brought to light the toxic climate in America’s political life. While the details of the shooter’s motive remain unclear, the violence is yet another measure of how what was once unacceptable, if not unthinkable, in American society has become painfully commonplace.
While the 2024 elections enters a crucial phase before the national conventions, how the nation responds will test the first presidential contest since 2020, an election that was defined by efforts to reverse Trump’s defeat and the January 6, 2021, attack at the US Capitol.
On Sunday, civic leaders, pastors and elected officials of the President Joe Biden down appealed to Americans for unity, calling for an end to the vitriol.
“We cannot allow this violence to be normalized,” Biden said in an evening address to the nation from the Oval Office.
Under a charged atmosphere, the Republican National Convention opens this week in Milwaukee to rename trump to lead the ticket as Democrats prepare for their own convention next month, unsure whether the party will stick with incumbent Biden in an expected rematch.
Trump’s rhetoric, although moderate in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, has taken on deeper, darker tones in this, his third campaign for the White House.
This spring, Trump, who accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of the country” and promised to launch the largest domestic deportation operationtold auto workers that there would be a “ blood bath ” in this country if he is not re-elected.
“If we don’t win, I think our country is finished,” he said during the New Hampshire primary.
Trump promised retribution to his political rivals, especially those at the Justice Department, after he was indicted on federal charges of classified document storage at his home in Mar-a-Lago and conspiracy to overturn the 2020 elections.
Trump also made light of the violence. When Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked by an intruder looking for the former president of the Chamber at the family home in San Francisco in 2022 – beaten over the head with a hammer – Trump mocked the security fence she installed as insufficient.
Trump drew laughter in a speech before California Republicans last year when he asked, “By the way, how’s her husband doing?”
Biden, in turn, warned that Trump’s return to power represents a serious threat to the country’s civic traditions. He chose a location near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for his 2024 campaign kickoff eventportraying the likely rematch as “all about” whether democracy can survive.
Addressing the nation on Sunday, Biden pointed to past examples of political upheaval, including January 6 and, more recently, harassment of election workers, and said: “There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence , Never”.
Still, one of Trump’s possible picks for vice president, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, said on social media over the weekend that Biden’s past rhetoric against Trump “led directly” to the assassination attempt.
And House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has said it is time to “lower the temperature in this country,” also pointed to Biden’s recent comments during a call with political donors in which the president said, “It’s time to put Trump in.” on target”. .”
Johnson said he knows Biden didn’t literally mean that Trump should be targeted, but added that “that kind of language from both sides should be denounced.”
Nick Beauchamp, associate professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston, said there is now an opportunity for political leaders “to begin framing their criticism of others in words that explicitly denounce violence.”
Since the 1968 murders American leaders Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to the attack on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, to the shootings of Republicans and Democrats over the past decade, violent tension has always been a part of American politics.
Other violent incidents have more recently intersected with the country’s political struggles in frightening ways.
Outside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s suburban home, a man with a knife and a gun who threatened to kill the judge was arrested in 2022. Members of Congress faced increasing security threats. AND harassment against election officials in cities and states across the country led to a wave of departures due to threats to their livelihoods.
Last summer, FBI agents shot and killed a Utah man who had threatened to murder Biden and has referred to himself as a “MAGA Trumper.” This followed a series of shootings earlier this year targeting Democrats in New Mexico, a surprising outburst that led to criminal charges against a failed state legislative candidate who repeated Trump’s fraudulent election rhetoric.
A gunman who died in a 2022 shooting after trying to break into the FBI’s Cincinnati office apparently took to social media and called for federal agents to be killed “on sight” following the search of Trump’s former Mar-a-Lago estate .
Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who focuses on domestic terrorism, said, “The warning lights have been flashing red regarding violence this election cycle for months, if not years.”
When Trump took the stage Saturday night, he opened the rally in Pennsylvania, as he always does, marveling at the “big, beautiful crowd” gathered to see him — and dismissing Biden’s own crowds as insignificant by comparison.
The former president had just begun his speech, launching into his mass deportation agenda and complaints of a nation in decline.
“Our country is going to hell,” Trump said.
Minutes later, shots were heard.
Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, who sat with other Republican officials behind Trump, called it all a terrible tragedy. “The level of incivility and hostility, perhaps this sends a signal to all those to calm down,” he told the AP.
As Americans took stock Sunday, the common message was a call for unity.
The Rev. Chris Morgan, senior pastor at Christ United Methodist Church in Bethel Park, which is a few streets away from where the shooter lived, urged his congregation during a morning service to pray for the country.
“Clearly there is a lot going on that is causing people a lot of anxiety and a lot of struggle,” he said. “I want to encourage you to pray for those who were involved so that they too can discover what it means to show kindness to others.”
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Associated Press writers Ali Swenson, Brian Slodysko and Holly Meyer contributed to this report.
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