Trump rally shooting flings U.S. to perilous juncture: What path will it take?

American history is repeating itself in a most macabre way.

If everything unfolds as expected, Donald Trump will deliver a triumphant speech in Milwaukee next Thursday night to accept the Republican presidential nomination.

Adrenaline will be coursing through that crowd for another reason: His admirers will celebrate his very survival from an apparent campaign-stop assassination attempt.

Literally one block away from the convention site, an uncannily similar event occurred. Another former president, also seeking a comeback, who'd just been struck by a bullet in an attack at a campaign stop celebrated his miraculous survival with adoring supporters.

«I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,» Teddy Roosevelt told them, in 1912, a few metres from where Trump is scheduled to accept the nomination.

«But it takes more than that to kill a bull moose.»

Roosevelt showed the crowd his blood-stained speaking notes, which may have saved his life by slowing the bullet that slightly punctured his chest.

There's something else Roosevelt did that day, and we'll find out quickly whether Trump emulates him now during a fragile moment for American democracy.

He turned the temperature down.

Surrounded by a potential mob, Roosevelt urged everyone to stay peaceful. His supporters wanted action against the mentally disturbed gunman, chanting «Kill him!» Roosevelt encouraged first them, then the arresting police officers, to leave the man unharmed.

It's what happened north of the border, too, when the leader of the Parti Québécois was targeted by a shooter in 2012. In the aftermath, Pauline Marois maintained rhetoric to avoid stoking more violence.

Trump weighed his words carefully in his first statement on Saturday's shocking