Blood and bravado: the Trump shooting upended an election and shook the US | Donald Trump

Blake Marnell was held in the front row, about 10 meters from Donald Trump, when the gunshots were sounded. He watched the secret services stacking the former American president. “I could see him standing and I could see the blood on his ear,” recalls Marnell. “”When he put his fist, I remember shouting: “Yes! Yes! Yes!'”

On Sunday has marked a year since Trump’s assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a week that changed American politics. Eight days later, President Joe Biden, 81, abandoned the electoral race among the concerns about his mental and physical decline.

The twin shocks of the July 2024 system continue to echo. Trump supporters welcomed his survival as proof of divine intervention. He declared in his inaugural speech in January: “I was saved by God to make America again large.” He governed with zealous self -confidence that earns comparisons with the authorities of history.

Democrats, on the other hand, continue to fight against the fallout from Biden’s late withdrawal. Some maintain that he could have continued and win; Most believe that he left the race too late and paved the way for Trump’s return to the White House. Younger voters accuse the establishment of the betrayal party and beat the drum for generational change.

This little dispute is that Trump’s shooting was revealing a culture of political violence that has settled in the last decade, with recent examples, including the murder of a politician from Minnesota and her husband. He also triggered a news cycle which barely resumed the breath in the past year, because the least conventional president of modern times dominates the national conscience.

For Marnell, who lives in San Diego, California,, This hot summer day in Butler began as dozens of other Trump rallies to which he has gone before and since. He wore a “brick costume” which symbolizes the president’s border wall and watched a giant screen which displayed a graph detailing the American border passengers.

Trump had his head turned to the right to see the graphic again when the shots started and cut his right ear. “I did not even recognize them as shots,” said Marnell, 60, during a telephone interview. “I thought they could be firecrackers.”

For several long seconds, there was pandemonium. Fireman Corey Comperatore was killed while David Dutch and James Copenhaver were both hospitalized with injuries. The secret service agents killed the shooter, Thomas Crooks, 20, whose motivations remain a mystery, and rushed on Trump, whose fate was initially uncertain.

“There were all the emotions in the crowd. There was anger. There were people who turned around and shouted at the television cameras. There were people who were in prayer. There were people who were crying. There were people who were incredulous. It was just a range of incredible reactions. ”

But what happened then has become the fabric of political legend. Trump got up, pumped his fist and begged his disciples to “fight!” Fight! Fight ”even though the blood had striated with his face. The resulting image has blinned in the world and is always displayed in the west wing and carried on t-shirts by its acolytes “Make America Great Again” (Maga).

Henry Olsen, a principal researcher at the Center for Thinktank Ethics and Public Policy in Washington, said: “He showed courage and determination when you think the first thing that someone wants to do is to slip and save himself. His answer was to be the medieval leader who joined his troops around the banner and showing that he was not determined to fight, to use his word. It was incredibly moving.

Biden was quick to call Trump and express his sympathy. On July 17, Biden was tested positive for COVID-19. On July 19, Trump, bearing a patch in the ear, pronounced an address of 90 minutes to the National Republican Convention in Milwaukee, where some delegates wore solidarity ear plates.

Then, on July 21, Biden suddenly announced that he was deviating and would not be the Democratic candidate for the presidency. The writing was on the wall since its disastrous performance of debate against Trump the previous month. Party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had urged him to withdraw. Finally, he gave in.

Even according to standards of the Trump era, it had been a breathtaking eight days. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics of the University of Virginia, said: “There have been dramatic weeks and months, but, in an electoral campaign, there is nothing like in all of American history.”

Journalist Chris Whipple worked on a different project when he learned the news from the release of Biden, “realized that it was the political story of the century”, and pivoted to write a book that would become unknown: how Trump beat Biden, Harris and the rating campaign ratings in history.

“It created this devastating divasty screen between Trump’s forces and Biden’s weakness,” said Whipple. “The image of Trump rising this step with blood on his cheeks and his fist in the bubbling air ‘fighting, fighting,” was devastating compared to the image of Biden shortly after climbing air force one with the point heading towards his bunker in the beach of Rehoboth, standing on these steps, looking at and seizing the hand.“”

In their new book 2024: How Trump took over the White House and the Democrats lost America, journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf write how Trump’s future staff chief, Susie Wiles, told her after the attempted assassination: “You know that it is God.” At the beginning, Trump was silent, they write, but the next day, he said to everyone: “If someone doubted, there was a god, who turned out to be there.”

Many speakers of the Republican Convention insisted that Trump had been spared by God so that he could continue his mission. The Strait Pastor, Lorenzo Sewell, describes him as “mimeter”.

Whipple added: “To date, the real believers think it was God’s plan and perhaps – without playing the chair psychologist – it contributed to a kind of intrepidity in Trump that I am not sure that we saw in the first term. Some could say carelessness. It changed Trump. It changed the country.”

Conversely, the Democrats have still not recovered from the debacle of the late departure of Biden. His successor anointed, Kamala Harris, had only 107 days to campaign and sparked a burst of democratic enthusiasm, especially during the party convention and when she debated Trump. But it was too little too late and she lost both the electoral college and the national popular vote.

Whipple commented: “It was a seismic political event and the reverberations continue to date. His 11th hour abdication, leaving Kamala Harris with a track too short to set up a winning campaign, is obviously historic and there is a lot of anger among the Democrats to date that Biden should have moved away a year earlier or more.

“It has real political ramifications. We see it in the popularity of Zohran Mamdani in New York and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. It is not only their message that calls on so many people but also to the fact that they are anti-establishment. Biden and his gang came to represent the corrupt democratic establishment because of its last -minute abdication. You see an anti-establishment revolt. “”

The determination of Biden to hang there was the subject of democratic hits – and several books – although he insists that he has no regrets. Many in the party want him to withdraw after the mid-term elections of 2022, which could have organized an open main competition to find an apparent heir. Now the Democrats find themselves without leader and, according to a March survey, at a low approval note of 29%.

Kurt Bardella, Democratic strategist and political commentator, said: “The real fallout was the lack of a clear successor to President Biden.

“If there had been a real primary process which could have taken place for a year and a half, it would have eliminated the contenders and the contenders and would have put forward a ticket which, even if they ended up losing, could still have been part of the conversation in 2028. Instead, we are already starting in 2028.”

The way the elections are won and lost are always complex. With the inflation and immigration that is looming, nothing guarantees that another Democratic candidate would have beaten Trump. You never know how much his response to television is determined at the assassination attempt. But that had significant consequences.

A few minutes after the shooting, Elon Musk, the technological billionaire, announced his approval from the former president. Musk would spend a record of around $ 280 million to support the Trump and Republican candidates, then direct the president’s assault against the federal bureaucracy to their spectacular fall.

Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, also praised Trump’s reaction, describing his raised fist “one of the most covered things I have ever seen in my life”. Zuckerberg then attended the inauguration of Trump and making changes to metas such as the end of the verification of third -party facts, the removal of restrictions on subjects such as immigration and gender identity and bringing political content to user flows.

The events of a year ago may also have shaped the psychology of Trump, fueling an impatient approach and seized of the presidency which writes the agenda of news at a dizzying speed, makes the opponents fall on their heels and brooks without compromise.

Olsen said: “Trump composed it up to 11 on his inauguration. This is largely the indirect influence of his survival of the assassination attempt. He is a man who goes with his instinct and will do what he will do and not give priority – he will push everything at the same time.”

Trump survived the legal problems and took the elites and won, at least in his own mind, added Olsen. “I don’t think he thinks he’s invincible but he feels justified. Coupled with a feeling of vulnerability, he is a guy who knows that everything could end tomorrow and believes that he has been proven, so he will use the moment he left him to go ahead to do even more than he thinks of being right. “