The second assassination attempt on Donald Trump in just two months has once again intensified the US presidential election campaign, despite the lack of a clear indication of the direction this new turn could take.
The fact that a presidential candidate, in addition to being the former president of the USA, was subjected to two armed attacks during the election campaign is already a precedent in American political history.
This makes the 50 or so days of the campaign, and especially the outcome of the November presidential elections, extremely unpredictable. Still, some regularities in the abundance of twists and turns so far suggest that the main direction of the campaign need not be too turbulent, even after preventing a second assassination attempt on Trump at his Florida estate.
"Second attempt will feed into Trump campaign's assertion that Democrats don't want him to win. But I don't think it changes the outlook for voters. The people who are voting for Trump will be unmoved," Tina Fordham, a geopolitical strategist, told Bloomberg.
How to capitalise on the incident?
The initial response from the Trump team upon averting the assassination in West Palm Beach, coupled with the candid reactions of the Republican presidential candidate, clearly suggest that they intend to capitalise on this incident to further advance their campaign.
After all, they did it after the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania in July, when Trump was a fraction of a second and a few inches away from death.
Everyone in Trump's position would surely attempt to gain as much political advantage as they could in such circumstances, and this will likely continue after the Florida incident.
Trump spoke on the phone with Joe Biden on Monday, and the conversation was "cordial," according to the White House Spokesperson. And Kamala Harris, after the incident in Florida, expressed her relief that Trump is fine ("I am glad he is safe").
Trump took the initiative to demonstrate how he intended to channel his fresh emotions following the Florida incident
However, given the short-lived nature of the truce, the expected concern and even solidarity from Democratic opponents, as well as Trump's acceptance of their warm words, should not be misleading.
Trump took the initiative to demonstrate how he intended to channel his fresh emotions following the Florida incident. Immediately afterwards, he directly blamed Biden and Kamal Harris for the new assassination attempt.
"He (the arrested Ryan Wesley Routy) believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it. Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at," Trump told Fox News Digital. At the same time, he wrote on social media - "Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!"
Assassinations and court proceedings
Trump intends to establish a direct connection between the second assassination attempt he experienced and the recent TV debate in which he performed poorly, leveraging the still-fresh emotions from the Florida incident to mitigate the harm he endured during the debate.
Trump's second and longer-term goal is to uphold and radicalise the previous narrative that the democratic establishment is committed to preventing him from becoming president.
Trump will also use the assassination attempt in Florida as his political defence in the legal proceedings against him, which he treats from the beginning as politically motivated and a way to prevent him from winning the elections in November.
Trump runs the risk of alienating moderate Republican voters and undecided voters
However, no matter how persistent he is, Trump has been wasting energy in vain to prove to his voters that he is the victim of a "witch hunt," because they have long been convinced that this is true.
However, he runs the risk of alienating moderate Republican voters and undecided voters, for whom covering up his prior criminal conviction with another assassination attempt will simply be too much.
Damage repair
The previous assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 will be, in terms of political consequences, hardly comparable to the incident in Florida. Television recorded the dramatic event, in which a bullet hit Trump, the assailant died, and one Trump supporter in the audience also died.
Following the incident, the former president received not only words of solidarity from the opposite political camp but also from a large number of world statesmen. That will not happen this time, not because there is any doubt that his life was in danger again, but because it was thwarted in time, without dramatic images from the scene.
The July assassination attempt on Trump was an important turning point in the election campaign, but much more on the side of the Democrats than the Republicans - Kamala Harris and Tim Walz
The July assassination attempt on Trump was an important turning point in the election campaign, but much more on the side of the Democrats than the Republicans. That event decisively influenced the Democrats' determination to change the candidate, and just eight days after the shooting, Joe Biden gave up his candidacy and entrusted it to Kamala Harris.
It turned out to be the right move because the US Vice President soon received a formal presidential nomination, as well as abundant finances for her campaign.
Trump, however, did not particularly profit politically from the July assassination attempt because the change of competitor surprised him, so he did not find a way to match Kamala Harris, with whom he is still in a close race for support, often lagging behind her.
For him, the most favourable outcome of the incident in Florida will still be if he manages to cover several recent fouls with it, and above all, his poor and unconvincing performance during the TV debate with Kamala Harris, as well as the effects of the fake story he then spread saying that migrants from Haiti to Springfield, Ohio, eat pets.
