A sad sense of déjà vu in a campaign gone completely crazy. Barely two months after coming within inches of death at a rally on July 13, Donald Trump was the target of a new alleged assassination attempt on September 15 on a golf course in Florida. While the motives of the shooter – Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old pro-Ukrainian American who was spotted before he could carry out the attack – remain unclear, this new incident has once again disrupted the electoral tempo some fifty days before the vote on November 5.
Beyond the questions it raises about the former president’s security, this event could give the Republican candidate an opportunity to regain control of the campaign, at a time when the latest polls show him losing ground to his Democratic rival. A recent ABC/Ipsos study conducted after his mixed debate on September 10 put him six points behind Kamala Harris (52% to 46% for Trump) among voters likely to go to the polls.
Will he be able to use this new attack to recover? In any case, he would be wrong not to try. “Donald Trump has always been the first to try to twist the media narrative in his favor,” recalls Lauric Henneton, lecturer at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin. “It is likely that he will try to use this event to try to relaunch his campaign.” Especially since, as in July, the event offers him a ready-made argument to support his martyr rhetoric, which he has developed for years.
Democratic embarrassment
In the Republican camp, his most loyal supporters have already jumped at the chance to attack those who – among Democrats or in the press – have denounced the dangers of the Republican leader’s authoritarian tendencies. “Dear Democrats and your activists in the media. Are the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump now considered a ‘threat to democracy’?” Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said a few hours after the events. The next day, Trump himself blamed this alleged attack on the “rhetoric” of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris…
It remains to be seen whether this new twist will be enough to convert the test at the ballot box. “This type of event can resonate with some less politicized voters,” points out Lauric Henneton. Even if the effect should remain marginal, it can have an influence in an election that will be decided down to the wire in a handful of key states.” Two weeks after the failed attack of July 13, the Republican candidate had seen his popularity rating climb by an average of almost two points.
The challenge now for Democrats is to reconcile the resumption of the campaign with the necessary calls for appeasement following the shooting. During the first attack on the billionaire last July, Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal eight days later and Kamala Harris’s entry into the campaign at short notice allowed them to bounce back spectacularly. Eclipsing, in the process, the sequence of the failed attack on Trump. In the absence of a wild card, it could, this time, be more difficult to get going. For Donald Trump, who has continued to fuel political violence on the American political scene in recent years, this violence could ultimately be, even when it is directed against him, his best ally.
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