Members of the FBI are seen at the crime scene outside the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15, 2024.CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images
Some years, the American presidential election is a stately march from primaries to conventions to general election. Then there is the 2024 campaign.
Two assassination attempts (including what the FBI says is an apparent one on Sunday, but not yet confirmed). Two debates that upended the narrative. An incumbent president essentially dethroned. A former president facing multiple lawsuits and possible imprisonment. A Supreme Court ruling that basically renders presidential action immune to legal challenge.
And that’s before we get to childless cat women, Haitian migrants falsely charged with eating people’s pets, a pop-music star mobilizing her millions of fans – and a presidential candidate telling the country how much he hates that singer.
The result is a period of unusual turmoil and turbulence.
“This does feel like one of those extended moments in American politics when the underside of American culture surfaces,” said Matthew Dallek, a George Washington University political historian.
“It is a time when things have become more toxic, more violent and uglier. We seem to be in the midst of a period of profound social and political change and upheaval – and at a time when social media is a cesspool.”
The United States right now is a country full of drama, full of high passions, full of contention – and, as Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump shows, also full of guns.
“This is a country that is living in the Twilight Zone,” said Charles Raison, a psychiatrist who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“People are being spun around regularly and are losing their bearing. Things that 10 or 15 years ago would have been remarkable now are part of everyday life. We are being buried alive in startling events.”
Donald Trump target of suspected assassination attempt in Florida
The latest apparent attempt on Mr. Trump’s life occurred on home ground in Florida. The earlier attempt occurred on the contested ground of swing-state Pennsylvania, a state where schools are closed on the first day of hunting season. Mr. Trump used both episodes to display his determination to press on.
“I am safe and well, and no one was hurt,” the 45th president said Sunday. “But, there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us.”
A number of media outlets identified Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii, as the principal suspect in the attempt on the life of Mr. Trump. No motive was immediately identified, though Mr. Routh told The New York Times last year that he had travelled to Ukraine in support its struggle against Russia; it was not immediately apparent whether Mr. Routh’s interest in Ukraine was a factor in the Sunday shooting incident.
(Mr. Trump has not expressed clear support for Ukraine, and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, has indicated that he does not support continued American aid to Ukraine.)
Both Democrats and Republicans, plus the various third-party candidates, say this year’s contest is a critical election. The country has had such moments before. Few match this election for the unexpected and unprecedented.
Consider the 1932 race between president Herbert Hoover and governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which was contested at a time of great peril: the country in the depths of the Great Depression, millions out of work, the future of democratic rule under question, the credibility of capitalism not assured.
Mr. Hoover was nominated for a second term, Mr. Roosevelt was established as his challenger and the two conducted a bitter struggle. Mr. Roosevelt prevailed, and that was that. High drama, high stakes. But none of the disruptions the country has experienced this year. It was a relatively tame election.
Other campaigns have had assassination attempts – the attempt on the life of former president Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 campaign; the assassination of senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968; and the shooting of governor George Wallace in 1972.
There was massive upheaval in 1968, when the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Mr. Kennedy were assassinated, and when major American cities burst into flames during continued rioting. But there was not the prospect of a disruption in the peaceful transfer of power that there is today.
The best comparison with 2024 might be the 1860 election, whose result (the ascendancy of Abraham Lincoln as president) led to the Civil War. Four major figures fought for advantage. Southern states contemplated secession, and several did leave the Union before Inauguration Day. But even in that fraught year, the campaign went ahead without major disruptions.
“Its very hard to see a more emotional and more uncertain election year than 1860,” said Michael Birkner, a Gettysburg College historian. “But this year, you have not only two assassination attempts, but also the deep uncertainty about whether Trump will renew his insistence that the election is lost if he doesn’t win.
“A repeat of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, would be an alarming threat to our future of the country.”