How rally shooting could reshape US presidential election as Trump’s image takes iconic status

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The great disruptor whom many see as the clear and present threat to democracy and the rule of law has himself become a victim — and survivor — of the ultimate act of political violence.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic junior senator, John Fetterman, cautioned Sunday that the attack should not become “an opportunity for politics or strategy, or how this might play out.”

Yet the dynamics of the Republican Party’s national nominating convention, starting Monday in Milwaukee, are sure to be transformed along with the campaign more broadly, as Trump seeks to make hay out of horror.

An often divisive figure but a canny campaigner with unswerving political instincts, Trump took the high ground Sunday as he called for Americans to stand together in “not allowing evil to win.”

He would have expected a ticker-tape parade anyway, but his brush with death ensures near-mythic status among the 50,000 expected attendees in Wisconsin who already see the Republican tycoon as their warrior and champion.

“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”

The chaotic and bloody scene — which unfolded with less than four months until the presidential election — was certain to reverberate loudly across a fractured and heated American political landscape strained repeatedly in recent years.

Trump was visiting swing-state Pennsylvania for his last rally before the convention and as he is preparing to announce his vice presidential pick.

In the shooting’s immediate aftermath, Trump’s supporters cheered images of the bloodied former president — who pumped his fist in defiance as he was being hurried from the stage. Trump was released from a local hospital Saturday night after being evaluated.

President Joe Biden was receiving an updated briefing from homeland security and law enforcement officials around midday Sunday at the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter.

He delivered brief remarks from Delaware on Saturday, condemning the shooting as “sick.”

“We cannot be like this, we cannot condone this,” Biden said. “Everybody must condemn it.”

Grievance narrative

Plastered on front pages around the world and spreading virally on social media, the image showing Trump’s raised fist against the backdrop of an American flag flying above him will be worth more than even the most lavish ad campaign.

Election messaging is about contrasts and, seizing the moment, Trump demonstrated a courage and fortitude that voters are certain to compare with weeks of disastrous headlines about President Joe Biden’s frailty.

Crucially, the attack plays into Trump’s grievance narrative about Democrats being out to get his support base, and that he is taking the slings and arrows - literally, now - so that they don’t have to.

Discussing the impact of the shooting on the convention, Democratic former White House strategist David Axelrod predicted on CNN that Trump would be “greeted as a kind of martyr.”

Meanwhile the Republican’s adversaries - wary of being accused of failing to read the room - are likely to find criticizing the former president a trickier proposition.

Biden has been taking the fight to Trump recently, in an aggressive effort to present his predecessor as a threat to democracy.

It is a message that could fall on deaf ears, though, against a target who barely escaped with his life in an act which many will see as something akin to domestic terrorism.

The Biden campaign said it was “pausing all outbound communications and working to pull down our television ads as quickly as possible,” multiple media outlets reported, in response to the assassination attempt.

Lasting impact?

On the Democratic upside, the attack on Trump solves a more immediate problem for Biden.

The president has been lambasted for his lackluster debate showing against Trump in Atlanta last month, when he struggled even to finish sentences, let alone articulate a clear case for four more years.

Suddenly days of painful splash headlines for the Democrat have been relegated to the inside pages or swept away entirely, as the parties argue over whose political rhetoric is most to blame for fomenting violence.

Biden’s opponents within his own party may also find it hard to mount a serious challenge to his candidacy without appearing nakedly opportunist at a time of national crisis.

In terms of ramifications for the vote itself, it seems obvious that Trump would receive some kind of boost from Americans angered by the shooting, and the anti-Trump rhetoric that many Republicans say contributed to it.

But the longer term benefit might be more to do with juicing turnout than converting agnostics, according to veteran pollster Frank Luntz.

“In the end, voters will settle down and return to their candidate of choice. The people who move towards Trump out of sympathy will probably move back,” he posted on X.

“But what happened in (Pennsylvania) will definitely impact the final vote, guaranteeing that every Trump voter will actually vote.”

Luntz believes the participation gap may end up being worth up to two points nationwide, with a more accentuated boost in Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state that Biden needs to defend if he is to have any hope of prevailing in November.

“This doesn’t guarantee that Trump flips Pennsylvania. But the long and winding road for Joe Biden just became even longer and windier,” Luntz added.