Jul 15, 2024 - 22:44
By edition.cnn.com

Attack on Trump reopens a chilling chapter in American politics

CNN —

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, which opens a dark new chapter in America’s cursed story of political violence, shook a nation already deeply estranged during one of the most tense periods of its modern history.

The targeting of a former president at a campaign rally just days before he accepts the Republican nomination is, by definition, an attack on democracy and the right of each American to choose their leaders.

The presumptive GOP nominee was on stage, with supporters as usual behind him in bleachers holding up posters and wearing their MAGA regalia, when shots rang out. He flinched, then grabbed the side of his face and disappeared behind his podium as people started to scream and the surreal nature of what was happening began to dawn.

The ex-president later said that he felt a bullet rip through the skin of his ear, which poured with blood as he was rushed from the scene. The shots fired by a gunman on a roof outside the perimeter of his rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, came a fraction of an inch from being a lot worse.

A photograph by Evan Vucci of the Associated Press of a defiant but alive Trump – with blood on his ear and cheek, being rushed off stage by Secret Service agents, fist raised with an American flag in the background – became instantly iconic. The image will define a fraught political age, whatever the so-far unknowable political aftermath of a sunny afternoon that turned into a nightmare.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)