Former President Donald Trump and his allies are fanning political flames after his Secret Service detail thwarted what the FBI is describing as what appears to be the second attempt to assassinate him in less than 10 weeks.
In a message posted to multiple social media platforms Monday, Trump accused his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden of taking "politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred." He said their rhetoric is responsible for threats and violence against him, even though they routinely denounce political violence and did so on Sunday.
Trump's most powerful ally, billionaire Elon Musk, wondered in a tweet why "no one is even trying to assassinate" Biden and Harris — a post that Musk later said was a joke and deleted.
But it was clear by midday Monday that Trump and his brain trust have no intention of dialing back on hot rhetoric, with less than two months left before Election Day. In turning so fast to Biden and Harris, Trump skipped past appeals for sympathy and even a perfunctory call for calm or unity.
The Republican presidential nominee was playing golf at his West Palm Beach course Sunday afternoon when a Secret Service agent noticed the muzzle of a gun protruding from the bushes several hundred yards from him, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a news conference later that day.
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The Secret Service fired at a suspect, who fled and was quickly apprehended by police. Trump was forced to shelter at the golf club for more than an hour before being transported to Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort, a source familiar with the matter said.
From Mar-a-Lago, where guests included House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Trump took phone calls from friends expressing their relief, listened in when acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe phoned Johnson to deliver a briefing on the incident, and told golf-related jokes, according to people familiar with his activities. The scare is unlikely to interfere with his schedule or campaign plans, according to a Trump adviser who has spoken with him since Sunday's incident.
“There won’t be many noticeable changes or anything too major,” the adviser said. “He is not frazzled or shaken by this, and, considering what he has been through, relatively relaxed.”
But, as Trump avoided a brush with death that could have come as close as the sniper's bullet that clipped his ear at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July, he once again had a decision to make about his own response: try to seize political advantage from the threats to his life or play them down in order to discourage future violence. It took less than 24 hours for him to choose the former, though there are signs of division within his ranks about his approach.
Some Trump allies believe that the campaign squandered an opportunity for unity following the first assassination attempt. Instead, Trump ramped up his anti-Harris rhetoric, which coincided with him losing traction in polls over the summer.
"Even independents were like, 'This can't stand, you can't assassinate a political candidate,'" said one former Trump adviser. "And then all of a sudden it's back to the clown show."
While his campaign's top advisers focused on his security — and that of his aides — in a message sent to staff Sunday night, his fundraising team pressed donors to give money in the immediate aftermath of the incident. On Monday, he repeated an assertion he made in an ABC News debate last week that Biden and Harris are responsible for him being targeted.
"Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at," he said in an interview with Fox News Digital, "when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside out."
On Sunday, Harris took a much different tack.
"As we gather the facts, I will be clear: I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence," she said in a statement. "I am thankful that former President Trump is safe."
Trump has not rebuked Musk for musing about assassinations of the sitting president and vice president.
For a brief moment after he survived being shot in July, Trump aides told the media that he was interested in unifying the country and would attempt to do so in his speech at the Republican National Convention. But he quickly pivoted from that stance and took off running in the other direction. The reversal was evident even within the four corners of that address, delivered July 18 in Milwaukee.
"The discord and division in our society must be healed," he said in the opening minutes. But later, he accused the Democratic Party of "weaponizing the justice system" because he has been convicted of felonies in New York and charged with crimes related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in federal court.
"We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement," he said. "In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy."
Since then, he has regularly threatened to jail his political opponents.
Trump aides say that he will be his own spokesman on the aborted assassination attempt.
"We follow his lead," said one aide. "We're not going to get ahead of his truth."
So far, that truth has been an attack on his political rival, Harris, and her boss, Biden, despite their disavowal of violence as a political tool.
Throughout nearly a decade in national politics, Trump has glorified violence — at least when it is not aimed at him.
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump wrote in a social media post during the protests following George Floyd's 2020 murder by Minneapolis police. He has suggested that the nation's top general be executed; made light of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband being attacked with a hammer in a gruesome assault; and praised the Jan. 6 rioters who pummeled cops, stormed the Capitol and tried to stop the counting of 2020 electoral votes by force.
It is not immediately clear whether the apparent second attempt on Trump's life will have an effect on the outcome of the campaign. He was facing a different candidate — Biden — at the time of the Pennsylvania shooting.
Since Harris replaced Biden as the Democrats' standard-bearer eight days after the first attempt, polls show Democrats to be in a stronger position to win in November. But most surveys reveal an extremely close race in which the two candidates are within the margin of error in pivotal swing states.
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