Donald Trump and the gathering darkness threatening US politics

By Richard Hargy, Queen's University Belfast

In America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box … not with bullets. The power to change America should always rest in the hands of the people, not in the hands of a would-be assassin.

So said the US president, Joe Biden, in an Oval Office address to the nation the day after the attempted assassination of his rival in November’s presidential election.

https://www.youtube.com/live/74CnCdgQPp4?si=0RjRS843zjghNDmX

The shockwaves of Trump surviving an effort to kill him at a campaign event in Pennsylvania on July 13 are still being felt across the United States and around the world. The FBI stated it has picked up on increasing levels of violent political rhetoric being expressed in the aftermath of the assassination attempt.

And, contrary to Biden’s insistence that there is “no place in America for this kind of violence”, Katie Stallard, a non-resident global fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington DC, believes that: “The attack on Donald Trump was shocking, but it wasn’t unprecedented by American standards, and it wasn’t entirely unforeseeable.”

The Trump assassination attempt follows a disturbing trend in America of extremists embarking on violent plots to silence their perceived opponents.

Researchers Professor Pete Simi of Chapman University, and Seamus Hughes, University of Nebraska, have examined threats against political candidates between 2013 and 2023. They found that “over the past 10 years, more than 500 individuals have been arrested for threatening public officials. And the trendline is shooting up.”

Over the past three years alone, America has witnessed a surge in violence linked to a darkening political landscape that has seen combative and toxic discourse infect its body politic.

The Capitol riots in January 2021 were preceded by a speech from the then president, Donald Trump, where he told an assembled crowd the November 2020 presidential election had been “stolen”. Following this address thousands of the president’s supporters marched on the Capitol building.

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