THE ATTACK AGAINST DONALD TRUMP

This Saturday, July 13, 2024, a man (Thomas Matthew Crooks) attacked former President Donald Trump, with a shot that slightly injured his right ear. According to the Secret Service the shooter "had fired multiple shots from an elevated position outside the rally". The attacker was killed by members of the Secret Service, and it appears that two more persons attending the former president's rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, were critically injured in the shooting, and another one dead.

Everything indicates that the former president is in good condition.

This attack is reminiscent of what happened 52 years ago in Maryland, when the then Democratic Party candidate, Alabama Governor George Wallace, was seriously injured by Arthur Bremer, which would result in Wallace withdrawing from the campaign for the Democratic candidacy and being paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. The attacker, although he was sentenced to 63 years in prison for the attack, was finally freed in 2007, after 35 years in prison.

Let us remember that Wallace was a candidate in favor of racial segregation and ultra-conservative, since at that time the entire South of the United States was Democratic, but in favor of the so-called Jim Crow Laws that established segregation between whites and blacks.

Although there have been numerous attempts on the lives of United States presidents, such as the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881,William Mackinley in 1901, and John F. Kennedy in 1963; and the failed attacks against Andrew Jackson in 1835, Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Harry Truman in 1950, Richard Nixon in 1974, Gerald Ford in 1975, Jimmy Carter in 1979 and Ronald Reagan in 1981; this attack against Trump is the first against a former president who is seeking his re-election.

Furthermore, the attack took place just two days before the start of the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Donald Trump will be elected as the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States for the third consecutive time.

Without a doubt, the attack, as well as the numerous legal accusations against Trump in the last year, have strengthened Trump's image among his followers and have bolster his complete dominance over the Republican Party.

Furthermore, the questioned presidential candidacy of current President Joe Biden, due to his diminished intellectual abilities due to his age and possibly senile dementia, have strengthened the advantage that Trump has in the polls over his Democratic Party rival.

It is too early to speculate whether the attack against Trump was the work of the already famous “lone wolves”, that is, people who individually try to change history with an assassination; or there is some type of conspiracy of powerful groups in the United States to eliminate the main contender from the presidential race.

What normally happens in the United States is that individuals are blamed, to avoid entering long and controversial investigations that could compromise powerful figures, institutions and groups within the United States, so it is most likely that the authorities will reach the “conclusion” that the attacker, acted “alone” and there is no type of conspiracy behind the attack.

There is no doubt that the political system in the United States and North American society are increasingly polarized given that the country's main problems are not solved by the political and economic elites (poverty, inequality, violence, insecurity, public deficit, debt, wars, environmental deterioration, drug addiction, etc.); and what they seek is to look for culprits outside the country's borders, accusing Russia, China, Iran, North Korea of ​​the decline of the international leadership of the United States; or undocumented migrants from many of the internal problems; or to countries like Mexico or Colombia for overdose deaths in the United States; etc.

As long as American elites continue to use the rest of the world as their “scapegoat” to explain to their people the serious problems that the United States suffers, the internal situation in the country will continue to worsen and the possibility of a Third World War will continue to grow.