Donald Trump was shot in the ear last night when a 20-year-old man opened fire during one of his campaign rallies in Pennsylvania.
The ex-president started bleeding, but otherwise escaped unharmed and is now safe in his hometown of New York City.
USA connoisseur and journalist Andreas Utterström now predicts that support for Trump will increase.
– This means that Donald Trump becomes a political martyr and that everything he has talked about for a long time – that he is under attack from the establishment and people who rule in secret and who have a secret agenda to oppress ordinary people – gets new nutrition. Nothing puts the finishing touches to that rhetoric like being the victim of an assassination attempt, he says when TV4 Nyheterna reaches him by phone.
– The USA is a country that would have to be put in an ice bath to bring the temperature down. Now something has happened that means the exact opposite. This was the absolute worst thing that could happen. This is exactly what I was worried would happen. An assassination or attempted assassination of any of the candidates or a judge of the Supreme Court. That it could be the spark that ignites something so unpleasant that I don’t want to think about it.
“Will not call for calm”
Washington Post reports that the conspiracy theories about who was really behind the deed are already hailing online.
Andreas Utterström sees this particular development as the most unpleasant:
– I am worried about what this could lead to because you can be sure that there are people who are mentally unstable and who have access to firearms who will believe that Joe Biden is behind it, says Andreas Utterström who does not believe that Trump will put his foot down against the theories:
– Historically speaking, he has always fueled conspiracy theories, and not tried to cool them down. It will be interesting to see how he reacts now that there will be conspiracy theories that Joe Biden is behind it. Will he say it outright himself? Or will he imply it in a way that he usually does by saying that “some say that…”? Or will he stay away from the subject and let his son handle it for him?
– One thing is certain and that is that he will not try to call for calm, because he has shown time and time again that he does not. Rather, he is the one who pushes when there is something that he himself can benefit from even if it can be dangerous, and so I think he will do so this time as well.
Biden in a difficult position
When asked what the shooting means for Joe Biden, Andreas Utterström answers that the president is now being put in a difficult position, where his staff can no longer be as hard on Trump as they should really be.
– First you have to let this settle down a bit and then I think that Biden and his staff will get to talk less about Trump as a person and more about the policy he wants to pursue, he says and continues:
– You can’t go hard against Trump and say he’s dangerous and call him a dictator and so on, because that’s already very fatalistic rhetoric on both sides. And that’s not good because there’s always people who see that, take it in and lash out and do dangerous things, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen now, I suspect.