Former President Donald Trump was injured in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, marking a significant and unprecedented event in the 2024 election. Bloomberg’s Saleha Mohsin and Sarah Holder discuss with experts Gregory Korte and Wendy Benjaminson the impact on Trump’s campaign, the political landscape, and historical context of political violence in America.
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By Julia Press
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On Saturday evening, former President Donald Trump was injured in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Even in a country with a history of assassinations and attempts, it is unprecedented.
Bloomberg national politics reporter Gregory Korte and senior editor Wendy Benjaminson join hosts Saleha Mohsin and Sarah Holder to discuss how the assassination attempt changes everything in the 2024 election – and how political violence has previously shaped America.
Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:
Saleha Mohsin: Former President Donald Trump was about six minutes into a speech on Saturday at a campaign rally – he’d had just enough time to start talking about border control – when several shots rang out.
AP: Take a look at what happened… [shots, screams]
Sarah Holder: Some of his supporters screamed, and some scattered. Trump threw himself down to the ground, and a swarm of Secret Service agents dove to shield him.
AP: [shots, screams]
Holder: When Trump reappeared moments later, his right ear was bleeding where a bullet had grazed him. As Secret Service agents hurried to get him offstage, Trump pumped his fist in the air, appearing to mouth the word “fight”.
Mohsin: Trump left the area immediately and within hours released a statement on his social media platform saying he was fine. He’s now in Milwaukee as planned for the Republican National Convention, which starts on Monday.
Holder: The investigation into the attack is still ongoing, but here’s what we know as of now: The shooter has been identified as 20-year old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Pennsylvania. The New York Times reported that Crooks is a registered Republican, who also donated $15 to a Democratic voter turnout organization in 2021.
He fired an AR-15 style rifle from a rooftop located just a few hundred feet away from Trump’s podium, and was killed on the scene.
One person at the rally was also killed. Two others are reportedly critically injured.
Gov. Josh Shapiro:Three of our fellow Pennsylvanians were shot – one fatally, two in critical condition.
Mohsin: The Secret Service is now under intense scrutiny, as authorities try to determine how this could have happened and whether the agency adequately responded in real time.
Joe Biden: I’ve directed an independent review of the national security at yesterday’s rally to assess exactly what happened.
Holder: In the high-stakes run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Saturday’s assassination attempt marks a turning point in a particularly chaotic campaign season.
Mohsin: The shooting in Pennsylvania is the kind of event that could change the trajectory of both Trump and Biden’s campaigns.
Holder: The question is — how. Could this convince undecided voters to rally around Trump? Could it upend the Democrats’ campaign strategy?
Mohsin: Could the violence give way to a rare moment of political unity? Or… will it just sow more division.
Today on the show: I speak with politics reporter Gregory Korte about how political violence has shaped history.
Holder: And we’ll talk to senior politics editor Wendy Benjaminson – for more on how the shooting could reshape the 2024 race. I’m Sarah Holder.
Mohsin: And I’m Saleha Mohsin. This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News.
Mohsin: Gregory, Wendy, thank you for joining me. It’s 8:20 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, July 14th.
How is it that we’re dealing with yet another incident, this time an attempt on a former president’s life?
Wendy Benjaminson: It’s really been a shocking weekend and a shocking reminder as you point out, Saleha, that these sort of things are happening with increasing frequency. When I was looking over the list of the presidential assassinations and assassinations attempts, I was sort of struck by how common it was in the 250 years of our history. But this one is different because it is during one of the most heated and divisive political campaigns in modern history. It’s a rematch between two elderly men and it seems more like the beginning of potential violence in elections becoming routine.
Mohsin: Gregory, the US has faced assassinations, successful and attempts before. Can we learn anything from how some of the historic moments have shaped the American psyche?
Gregory Korte: Anytime that a president has been assassinated, certainly it has been a huge blow to our identity as Americans, that the idea that we live in a democracy, the idea of the peaceful transition of power. And of course the first assassination that we had was of Abraham Lincoln in the aftermath of yet another traumatic event in our country’s history.
Then we had James Garfield. We had William McKinley. We had John F. Kennedy, which is within the public memory of this generation. And so, that certainly has been a jar, but then even these attempted assassinations can be shocking.
The country does tend to rally in these moments. We saw after the Kennedy assassination, his successor, Lyndon Johnson was able to pass a whole litany of significant legislation that we still talk about to this day.
Ronald Reagan faced a little bit of a bump in his popularity after the attempt on his life. Part of that was his personality. He joked with the doctors. He told them, ‘I hope you’re all Republicans.’ He told his wife, Nancy Reagan, ‘Sorry, honey, I forgot to duck.’ It was charming and it sort of helped him politically in the short term.
This is a much different situation, as Wendy points out, just because we are in this very heated moment. All these other assassinations, with the exception maybe of obviously the Lincoln assassination, happened kind of during moments of relative domestic calm. And this one coming amid the backdrop of this very contentious campaign is likely to just ramp up fears and anxieties around this election even more.
Mohsin: Wendy, do you think that this is going to change how Trump approaches campaigning?
Benjaminson: I don’t know if it will change how Trump approaches. It certainly is changing it right now over the last day or so since the shooting, because he has been uncharacteristically calm, one might say presidential, in calling for unity. He and Biden are echoing sort of the same theme of unity. But Trump also knows, as Gregory pointed out, that happened with Reagan, the fact that he wasn’t hurt seriously, really helps his campaign. He is now a sympathetic character.
All weekend, I was watching one headline after another, Al Sharpton and Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, rally behind Trump, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro rallies behind Trump. So when you have people like that putting Trump in a good light, when you have his base riled up, whether they think erroneously that Democrats were behind this, or whether they think, he’s the victim of violence and he’s a great man, they are now going to be sure and turn out in droves.
And so yes, this does nothing but help his campaign. Also two billionaires, Bill Ackman and Elon Musk immediately came out and said they backed him when they were on the fence before.
Mohsin: Gregory, do you think that some of the sympathy votes that Trump has now will last for the next couple of months? Because the vote isn’t until November and it is still July.
Korte: I think it’s a little early to say. We still haven’t seen a whole lot of really conclusive polling since this incident on Saturday night. And of course, the polls are trying to keep up with the rapid fire developments in this race.
What we do know is that every time former President Trump was indicted or convicted in the past year in all of these different cases, the four different criminal cases that he’s faced, he’s received a bonanza in fundraising.
And those were legal threats to him. This was a very real, physical, and potentially mortal threat to him. I would expect that it would resonate with Trump supporters manifold times more than these, these criminal cases. We’ll have to see the fundraising numbers as they come in.
Mohsin: From what I understand, the Trump campaign has already sent two, at least fundraising text messages going off of this.
Everything that’s happened, it comes on the heel of two fraught weeks for the Biden campaign. Our attention has been squarely focused on whether he was fit to serve as president, but now the campaign is pulling some of its ads, and frankly, it’s in a really tough position when it comes to attacking a targeted opponent. Think about that photo of Trump with blood on his face, the American flag in the background, and him standing strong. It’s patriotic.
On top of that, we’ve seen prominent Republicans, including Trump’s potential vice presidential pick J. D. Vance, blaming Biden’s fiery rhetoric that Trump is a danger to democracy.
So where does the conversation go from here?
Benjaminson: It’s going to be a very tricky row to hoe for Biden and for Trump.
You mentioned fundraising, Saleha, and Biden was just at the point where Trump was beginning to overtake his massive war chest. I think it’s over $220 million now. So Trump was just beginning to raise more money than he was. And now, as you said, Trump has put out at least two fundraising appeals. Biden has had to pull his because he cannot look like he is, uh, capitalizing or profiteering on the injury of his opponent. So they are pulling those. They are pulling ads.
Joe Biden is now acting in support of Donald Trump, and this cannot help his campaign. There will be a period now where Biden cannot call him a threat to democracy, cannot call him a dangerous man, cannot hit him as hard as he wanted to because of this shooting.
It’s very, very, very tricky. And the Republican National Convention starts tomorrow. Trump is a master of the moment in a way that Biden is very affable. Biden is very kind. He on Sunday night gave these remarks about how the country needs to be unified.
But that photo you mentioned of Trump holding up that defiant fist with the American flag and the Secret Service agents and him knowing that he needed to do that fist bump and then immediately go to the Republican National Convention and take charge of it. There are so many American stereotypes wrapped into that thing where the people do respond to in this country, that I think it’s going to be very, very difficult for Biden to keep up.
Mohsin: So, YouGov did a snap poll right after the rally, and it found that half of Americans view political violence as a, quote, very big problem. What do you guys think it will take to quell this?
Benjaminson: I don’t know what it will take to quell this if. Our poll in May, the Bloomberg News Morning Council poll showed a similar figure. So you had half the country already sort of resigned to this happening, and now their worst fears are realized. There has been political violence in the 2024 campaign. And let’s not forget that there was violence in the 2020 campaign, the January 6th insurrection.
The United States may be becoming one of those countries, at least as long as the rhetoric is so heated, where this is becoming commonplace, like it is in so many other places around the world in new democracies that aren’t used to the sort of peaceful transfer of power. It’s very, very sad. I, I don’t know how we’re going to get past it unless the characters in play change dramatically.
Mohsin: You mentioned the Republican National Convention. It begins Monday in Milwaukee. Gregory, you just got there, I think just an hour ago. What can we expect in the next couple of days?
Korte: I think you kind of have to tear up the script for how we might have thought that this convention was going to go. We still do have some unfinished business in that we are a couple of days from Trump’s nomination, and he still hasn’t picked his vice presidential running mate. So we have to hear that shortly, but the whole tone of this convention has shifted in that it reinforces this notion that Trump has very adeptly cultivated on the American right that it is a culture under siege.
That was a metaphor before, but now it’s quite literal. And so I would expect every single one of the speakers at this convention, and there are as many of a hundred of them over the four nights, are busy going back to their remarks to try to figure out how to incorporate the events of the weekend into their message to the delegates on the floor of the convention in Milwaukee.
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