Attempt on Trump's life shakes a presidential election like no other

When gunshots pierced the evening air at Donald Trump's rally in western Pennsylvania Saturday night, they echoed generations of political violence in some of America's most troubling moments — giving terrifying, percussive emphasis to a chaotic 2024 presidential election that is unlike any other in U.S. history.

The assassination attempt wrote a ghastly new chapter in the story of deepening division and American political polarization over the past decade. Intense us-versus-them rhetoric has climbed between liberals and conservatives as trust in reliable information sources has fallen, replaced by bad-faith actors on insufficiently moderated social media platforms. And unprecedented events shaking the nation’s political system keep accumulating.

Six weeks and one day before the shooting, Trump became the first former president convicted of a crime when a Manhattan jury found him guilty on all 34 felony counts related to falsifying business records to hide an alleged sexual encounter with a porn star so that he could help his political fortunes.

In between, Trump's late-June debate with President Joe Biden left the incumbent so politically damaged that some members of his own party have called on him to abandon his pending nomination. The Supreme Court granted Trump — and future presidents — broad immunity from prosecution for acts undertaken while in office.

And now Trump, on the precipice of officially accepting his third consecutive Republican nomination at next week's GOP convention, has survived an assassination attempt. It's the first time a president or presidential candidate has been wounded by a would-be assassin in more than four decades, since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.

Four presidents —