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      Biden embraces role as healer – but Trump remains king of the spectacle

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      Donald Trump has the stagecraft but Joe Biden still commands the biggest stage.A day after the former US president displayed his preternatural genius for spectacle – forcing the Secret Service to pause so he could show bloody defiance after a near-death experience – the spotlight turned back to his beleaguered election opponent.On Sunday, Biden delivered an Oval Office address for only the third time in his presidency, having previously done so when a deal was reached to avoid a breach of the debt ceiling and to comment on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.The set piece allowed him to demonstrate the power of incumbency, sending a message to Democratic rebels who want the 81-year-old to step aside amid concerns he lacks the mental agility to beat Trump.The familiar trappings of the Resolute Desk against a backdrop of family photos, window, flags and curtains also sought to project the image of Biden as president rather than candidate, an elder statesman rising above the fray to call for national unity after a traumatic moment.It was a solemn duty that came with relative ease to a man who, during 36 years in the Senate, made bipartisanship a cornerstone of his political identity.There is a need to “lower the temperature in our politics”, said Biden, his voice more solid and less throaty than during a recent debate and press conference. “And to remember: while we may disagree, we are not enemies.”The president urged everyone to take a “step back” and recognise the chilling pattern of the January 6 insurrection, the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the intimidation of election officials, the kidnapping plot against Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and the assassination attempt against Trump.“We cannot allow this violence to be normalised. The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down. We all have a responsibility to do this.”Biden, embracing his role as repairer of the breach, made a plea: “In America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box – you know that’s how we do it, at the ballot box, not with bullets. The power to change American should should always rest in the hands of the people, not in the hands of a would-be assassin.”Biden nodded towards a return to politics as usual soon, noting that the Republican convention starts on Monday and highlighting his own campaign efforts.But some of the old glitches did not disappear. While Biden showed his generous spirit by saying he had called his opponent and prayed for him, he referred to “former Trump” instead of “former President Trump”.The cold, dispassionate reality is that the failed assassination of Trump has strengthened the hand of both presidential candidates. Biden had been desperate to change the post-debate narrative and that happened in a way he would not have wished.Democrats have privately admitted that this is not the time to mount a challenge to his leadership, when they are concerned about the safety of their staff. But in the mind of the electorate, the perception of Biden as doddery and declining is likely to persist.For Trump, the gain is greater. What happened on Saturday turned the old maxim – what does not kill him makes stronger – literal. The circus master’s presence of mind, raising a fist and shouting “Fight!” to his supporters, produced a photograph for the ages and guaranteed his status as both messiah and martyr.This week the spotlight will turn firmly back in his direction. Come Thursday, instead of the august setting of the Oval Office, there will be the kitsch theatrics of a primetime speech at the Republican convention.Trump could do something truly historic by echoing Biden’s address, insisting that violence has no place in politics, accepting that his own narrow escape is a cathartic moment and now America must pull back from the brink. The rest of the election campaign could be one of decency and grace.Commentators would gush that Trump had become “presidential” and of course it wouldn’t last. Biden might have the bully pulpit but Trump remains the bully to beat. More

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      Donald Trump shooting: authorities attempt to determine motive as suspect’s devices seized

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      FBI officials said on Sunday they were assessing the shooting of Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday as a possible domestic terrorism attack and assassination attempt, as federal investigators executed a flurry of warrants in trying to determine a motive.The officials said there was no evidence that the 20-year-old suspected gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was operating as part of a larger group. But his reasons for scaling the roof of a building overlooking the rally to shoot at Trump remained unclear.By Sunday evening, dozens of federal investigators with the FBI, the ATF and all three US attorney’s offices in Pennsylvania were involved in an expanding investigation that had seized several of Crooks’ devices and started to piece together some of his communications before the rally.The other major development was the discovery of potential explosive devices in Crooks’ car. Former prosecutors suggested that those could indicate Crooks expected to survive the shooting.The devices and the AR-15-style rifle, which officials said was bought legally, were sent to the bureau’s lab in Quantico, Virginia.The ATF identified the owner of the gun through its national tracing center and using business records from a gun dealer. The results of the trace were provided to the FBI within 30 minutes, the agency’s spokesperson Katrina Mastropasqua said.The shooting at the campaign rally has raised the stakes and the significance of Trump’s appearance at the Republican national convention starting Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he will formally accept the GOP nomination for president and will unveil his running-mate.It also cast the 2024 presidential race into uncertainty. The campaigns for both Trump and Joe Biden pulled back on political functions over the weekend, as they moved to grapple with the immediate fallout of the situation.View image in fullscreenIn Washington, Biden spoke with Trump on a call described by a source familiar as “brief and very respectful” before receiving a briefing from top US officials including the attorney general, Merrick Garland, the FBI director Christopher Wray, the Secretary for Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.In brief remarks to the nation from the White House, Biden called the assassination attempt “contrary to everything we stand for us as a nation, everything. It’s not who we are as a nation. It’s not American. And we cannot allow this to happen”.Biden said he had demanded a national security review that he would share publicly, and that he had directed the US secret service to review security arrangements for the Republican convention.Later, in a primetime address, the president called for unity. The shooting “calls on all of us to take a step back,” Biden said. “We stand for an America of decency and grace … politics must never be a killing field.”Trump, for his part, huddled with senior advisers at his Bedminster club in New Jersey, keeping to his planned schedule as he prepared for the Republican convention, The Guardian previously reported. Trump’s next appearance is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday in Milwaukee, where he arrived on Sunday evening.“Based on yesterday’s terrible events, I was going to delay my trip to Wisconsin, and The Republican National Convention, by two days, but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or a potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else,” Trump wrote.The assassination attempt placed the secret service under intense scrutiny, with lawmakers from both parties moving to open investigations into the security arrangements and calling for the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, to account for the decisions.At issue remains how a single man with a semi-automatic rifle managed to access a roof 140 yards away from the stage where Trump was speaking at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.The House homeland security committee ordered the secret service’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to produce documents and communications related to the security apparatus for the rally and whether any requests for more resources had been rebuffed. More

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      Trump rally shooting: what we know about the suspected gunman

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      The early portrait that has emerged of the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who authorities say tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in the state on Saturday before secret service agents shot him to death is a complicated and so far sparse one.Thomas Matthew Crooks resided in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white, generally affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. Public records show he shared a home with parents who were licensed behavioral care counselors. Those same records contain no mention of any criminal or traffic citations – as well as any financial problems such as foreclosures.Actions that Crooks took late in his time as a student at Bethel Park high school offered virtually no hint of his political leanings. He was a junior at the school, and it was the first day of Joe Biden’s presidency, when Crooks donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a political action committee aligned with the president’s Democratic party. Public records show his father is a registered Republican and his mother a registered Democrat.Yet eight months later, early in his senior year, Crooks registered to vote as a member of the Republican party, led by Trump since 2016. And he had left his affiliation unchanged when he voted in the November 2022 midterm elections, which took place months after he graduated from Bethel Park high, where he was among a group of students to receive a $500 National Math and Science Initiative “star award”.A former classmate of Crooks’ said he had not shown any particular interest in politics in high school, but they would discuss computers and games. “He was super smart. That’s what really kind of threw me off was, this was, like, a really, really smart kid, like he excelled,” the classmate told Reuters. “Nothing crazy ever came up in any conversation.”Another young man who described himself as a former schoolmate of Crooks at Bethel Park high school spoke with reporters Sunday, recalling how his ex-companion “was bullied almost every day” on campus.The man told NBC News and other outlets that Crooks’ penchant for wearing “hunting” and “military” clothes – and eating alone at lunch – drew derision from his peers, who considered him a “loner” and an “outcast”.“You know how kids are these days – they’re going to see someone like that and they’re going to target him because they think it’s funny or whatever,” the man said to journalists.While the man made clear he wasn’t saying any of those experiences fueled Saturday’s assassination attempt, he added: “It’s honestly kind of sad … He was bullied so much.”ABC News reported that two former classmates of Crooks told the outlet that he was rejected from their school’s rifle club because he wasn’t a very skilled shot. School officials had not immediately confirmed those recollections.Crooks reportedly had an account on Discord, an online chat app that began as a space for gamers but gained notoriety in part because the white supremacist who fatally shot 10 people at grocery in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo posted on the platform about his plans to attack the store.Discord told the gaming news outlet Kotaku that the account that appeared to be linked to Crooks “was rarely utilized”.“We have no evidence that it was used to plan this incident or discuss his political views,” said the company’s statement to Kotaku. In addition to pledging to cooperate with law enforcement, the statement continued: “Discord strongly condemns violence of any kind, including political violence.”Crooks thrust himself into the center of the political world on Saturday when he went about an hour north of Bethel Park and got atop the roof of a bottle manufacturing plant in Butler county, Pennsylvania. Nearby, the former US president was speaking at a supporters’ rally as he pursues a return to the White House in November.Multiple people who were listening to Trump’s speech outside the rally venue said they spotted Crooks as he brought an AR-style rifle to the plant rooftop and took aim in the direction of the former president. But they said officers did not immediately react to their warnings – assertions that prompted the local district attorney, Richard Goldinger, to tell CNN that it was urgent for investigators to figure out how Crooks “would’ve gotten to the location where he was”.Crooks ultimately managed to fire several shots toward the stage where Trump was speaking, which was less than 500ft away (152.4 meters) away. One spectator was killed, and two others were critically wounded. Trump reported that a bullet “pierced the upper part” of his right ear, which was visibly bloodied – but he was otherwise “fine”, he said after Secret Service agents whisked him away from the scene.Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Secret Service said, agents returned fire at Crooks and killed him.View image in fullscreenABC News cited multiple law enforcement sources who told the outlet that the rifle the gunman fired on Saturday had been purchased legally by the suspect’s father, Matthew Crooks. Investigators arrived at that conclusion after the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms conducted an urgent trace on the weapon, according to the network.Separately, the Associated Press reported that authorities had discovered bomb-making materials in Crooks’ home and car, which was parked near the site of Saturday’s Trump rally.The Wall Street Journal added that police received multiple reports of suspicious packages near where Crooks was, prompting officials to dispatch bomb technicians.Graphic pictures of the scene circulating on social media showed Crooks had been clad in a T-shirt branded with the name of a YouTube channel dedicated to providing content on guns and demolition.Late Saturday, the channel’s host reposted a picture on Instagram of law enforcement officers standing over Crooks’ body – with part of the T-shirt’s wording visible – and wrote: “What the hell”.The FBI identified Crooks as Trump’s would-be assassin late on Saturday. On Sunday, the bureau said all available information suggested Crooks “acted alone” and there were no immediate “public safety concerns” about a larger plot.The FBI said it had not yet uncovered a motive for the apparent assassination attempt, or whether Crooks adhered to any specific ideologies. Crooks’ social media profile does not contain threatening language, authorities said on Sunday. Investigators have not found evidence of mental health issues.FBI officials told the AP that Crooks’ family was cooperating with their investigation – part of which also hoped to determine how he took the rifle he fired Saturday.Bethel Park skilled nursing and rehabilitation center, where Crooks was employed as a dietary aide, said it was “shocked and saddened” to hear he was responsible for Saturday’s shooting.“His background check was clean,” said a statement from the facility, which also condemned “all acts of violence”. More

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      Trump to keep schedule for Republican convention after rally shooting

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      Donald Trump huddled with his senior advisers at his Bedminster club in New Jersey a day after surviving what federal investigators called an assassination attempt, preparing for the Republican national convention, which kicks off on Monday.Trump was keeping the same schedule as originally planned, according to sources familiar with the situation. His next public appearance is tentatively set for Tuesday at the convention though the sources cautioned that could change.The assassination attempt has raised the stakes and the national significance of the convention, where Trump is set to deliver a speech and watch the announcement of his running mater in perhaps one of the most politically charged elections in the nation’s history.Trump spoke to Joe Biden on Sunday in a phone call described by one of the sources as “brief and very respectful”, but otherwise stuck with his schedule of meetings and convention planning in part to stave off the shock that came with the shooting.The shooter, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, used an AK-style semi-automatic rifle to fire multiple rounds at Trump roughly 10 minutes into his campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Crooks was shot dead by US secret service counter-snipers at the rally.The assassination investigation is being led by the FBI and the ATF. Federal investigators executed a number of search warrants on Sunday to try and establish motive for the shooting, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the matter.Trump was rushed off stage after the shooting and treated at a local medical facility for injuries to his right ear. He then travelled to Bedminster on his plane and landed shortly after midnight, one of the sources said.The number of staffers with Trump at the rally was limited, with some of his advance staff already in Milwaukee for the convention. The staffers with Trump included his campaign chief Susie Wiles, his spokesperson Steven Cheung and deputy communications director Margo Martin.From Bedminster, Trump said in a Truth Social post he intended to travel to the convention, as planned, on Sunday afternoon.“Based on yesterday’s terrible events, I was going to delay my trip to Wisconsin, and The Republican National Convention, by two days, but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or a potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else,” Trump wrote.In an earlier internal memo to staffers, reviewed by the Guardian, the Trump campaign’s leadership said that their plans for the convention also remained unchanged.“In moments of tragedy and horror, we must be resolute in our mission to re-elect President Trump. It is our fervent hope that this horrendous act will bring our team, and indeed the nation together in unity and we must renew our commitment to safety and peace for our country.”“The RNC Convention will continue as planned in Milwaukee, where we will nominate our President to be the brave and fearless nominee of the our Party. We appreciate your dedication and perseverance and are thankful for each and every one of you,” it read. More

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      Biden says he spoke with Trump after rally shooting: ‘No place in America for this kind of violence’

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      Joe Biden said that that there was “no place in America” for the sort of political violence that saw a gunman open fire on Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania and plunge America’s already fractious election campaign into new levels of fears over political unrest.“There is no place in America for this kind of violence or any violence for that matter. An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation,” Biden said. “Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now. Unity. We’ll debate and disagree, that’s not going to change, but we’re not going to lose sight of who we are as Americans.”Biden delivered the remarks at a White House press conference and described how he spoke with his bitter political rival who survived the assassination attempt with a head injury. One rally goer was also killed and two others injured.“Last night I spoke with Donald Trump,” said Biden, who noted the conversation was brief. “Jill and I are keeping him and his family in our prayers.”He also mentioned the victim who was killed in the shooting, 50-year-old Corey Comperatore.Biden continued that he has supported providing Trump’s campaign with the necessary secret service and security resources and directed the head of the US Secret Service to review all security measures for this week’s Republican National Convention in Milkwaukee, Wisconsin. The convention will nominate Trump as Biden’s opponent in November’s presidential election.Biden has been in the midst of pushing back against calls to step aside as the Democratic nominee by some Democratic elected officials and wealthy campaign donors, including actor George Clooney, following his poor performance during the first presidential election debate against Trump. More

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      Will Trump call for healing – or rub salt in wounds – in wake of rally shooting?

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      It will be the new must-have for every Donald Trump acolyte. The indelible image of the former US president, ear bloodied and fist raised as Secret Service agents try to rush him away from a would-be assassin’s bullets, has already been turned into a $35 T-shirt with a simple legend: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”The words are taken from Trump’s entreaty as he was bundled off stage in the aftermath of the shooting which left one man dead at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. His supporters responded with chants of “USA! USA!” and by angrily turning on the media, pointing fingers of blame at journalists.In an instant the 2024 presidential election, just 115 days away, and the future of America itself had been transformed. A polarised nation faces the threat of deepening political violence and hostility towards the press. In a country awash with guns, some feared that Saturday could mark the first shots in a second US civil war.Trump, ever the showman, who said on social media he felt the bullet “ripping through” his skin, was hailed by his base as a fighter, martyr and messiah. The viral photograph of his defiance is being used to project the 78-year-old as a tower of strength in contrast to Biden, 81, whose weak debate performance led to calls from his own party to exit the race for the White House.The political benefits were immediate. Billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Ackman threw their weight behind Trump. Jake Paul, a YouTube personality, tweeted: “If it isn’t apparent enough who God wants to win. When you try and kill God’s angels and saviors of the world it just makes them bigger.”Trump’s campaign also seized on the opportunity to fuel the convicted criminal’s narrative of persecution, sending out a fundraising text message that said: “They’re not after me, they’re after you.”Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, told the Reuters news agency: “The attempted assassination creates sympathy for Trump. It also confirms the idea to voters that something is fundamentally wrong in this nation, which is an idea that drives support for him.”The attack is likely to boost Trump’s appearances in Milwaukee this week at the Republican national convention as he accepts his party’s presidential nomination, fortifying the sense of grievance his supporters already feel toward the nation’s political elites.View image in fullscreenTrump’s speech on Thursday night could be a critical turning point, a prime time television opportunity to call for unity and healing – or to sow division and rub salt in wounds. Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and president of the Eurasia Group, told CNN he is not optimistic, noting that Trump’s “initial reaction when he stood back up – and it was incredible powerful imagery that we’re going to see for months now – was fight, fight, fight. That’s his instinct.”Bremmer added: “Every sinew of this man is he is going to fight against his enemies and yes, his enemy is the dead man, the 20-year-old that tried to assassinate him. But I think that Trump believes that his enemy is Joe Biden, his enemy are the members of the press, some of whom have been calling him Hitler, his enemy are people on the other side of the political spectrum that want to destroy him.”The motivation of the gunman is not yet known. The suspect, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was a registered Republican, according to state voter records. He previously made a $15 donation to a political action committee that raises money for left-leaning and Democratic politicians.His assault came within the context of the biggest and most sustained increase in US political violence since the 1970s. Of 14 fatal political attacks since supporters of Trump stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, in which the perpetrator or suspect had a clear partisan leaning, 13 were rightwing assailants. One was on the left.Members of Congress have been targeted: US Capitol police opened 8,008 threat assessment cases in 2023 – an increase of more than 500 from the previous year. A recent PBS NewsHour/ NPR/ Marist opinion poll found that one in five adults believes that Americans may have to resort to violence to get their own country back on track.Political leaders sought to douse the flames over the weekend. Biden, putting his campaign on pause, said such violence has no place in America and phoned his opponent, whom he referred to as “Donald” – a marked shift from the palpable rancour between the men at their first debate in Atlanta. Trump used social media to call for Americans to “stand United” and show their “True Character”.View image in fullscreenAnd Republican Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, told the NBC network’s Today show: “We’ve got to turn the rhetoric down. We’ve got to turn the temperature down in this country. We need leaders of all parties, on both sides, to call that out and make sure that happens so that we can go forward.”But Trump has regularly used violent, degrading and even apocalyptic language with his followers, warning of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected and saying immigrants in the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country”. In the wake of the shooting, his advisers and allies flipped the script on Biden, suggesting that it was the demonisation of the Republican candidate that led to the assassination attempt.JD Vance, an Ohio senator widely tipped to be named as Trump’s running mate at this week’s convention, posted on X: “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina posted a similar message, while Mike Collins, a Republican congressman from Georgia, tweeted: “The Republican District Attorney in Butler County, PA, should immediately file charges against Joseph R Biden for inciting an assassination.”Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of Trump’s campaign, said on X that “for years and even today, leftist activists, Democrat donors and now even Joe Biden have made disgusting remarks and descriptions of shooting Donald Trump … it’s high time they be held accountable for it … the best way is through the ballot box.”LaCivita was apparently referring to recent remarks by Biden made in the context of asking his supporters to focus on beating Trump rather than his own performance. “So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye,” said Biden, who has always condemned any political violence.Some compared America to a tinderbox. With disinformation and conspiracy theories swirling on social media, the mood was very different from past national traumas such as the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.Bremmer told CNN: “The response here needs to be like 9/11. It needs to be something where everyone comes together and says, this does not stand, we are all Americans together. I fear it’s going to be a lot more like January 6, where there will be a large number of people that will weaponise what just happened and we will continue to tribalise as a country and people won’t accept that the people on the other side of the aisle are Americans just like they are.” More

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      The Guardian view on Trump’s shooting: America’s future must be set by voters, not the gun | Editorial

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      The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, which injured the former president at a rally for his re-election campaign and killed a spectator, marks a shocking and frightening moment. Political violence is neither a new development nor an aberration for the US. Though thankfully Mr Trump survived, four American presidents have been murdered, along with candidates and holders of lower offices. Many more have faced serious threats to their lives.Sometimes such attempts are the work of an individual, such as John Hinckley Jr, who shot and injured Ronald Reagan while mentally ill, or of a small group bent on a particular aim. Sometimes, as with Abraham Lincoln’s murder, they speak to the roiling currents within American politics.Much remains unknown about the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper. Records show he was a registered Republican, but had given a small sum to a progressive action committee in 2021. Yet at a time of such rancour and division, many on both left and right already see Saturday’s shooting as part of a wider tide of violence and political hatred. The term “civil war” began trending on social media after the shooting.Mr Trump urged people to “stand united, and show our true character as Americans … not allowing evil to win”. His political opponents were also swift in denouncing this appalling act of violence, with Joe Biden describing the attack as “sick”.Many places around the world are seeing growing political violence and tolerance of such acts. A small but significant and persistent minority support violence either for or against Mr Trump, research has found. The director of the centre that carried out that research, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, has called the US a “tinderbox”. Many more Americans have weapons, thanks to surging gun sales in recent years; disinformation is rampant; and the internet also makes it easier for people with ill intent to organise.Conspiracy theories are already swirling, on both left and right. The image of a bloodied Mr Trump, fist raised in defiance, in front of the stars and stripes will surely harden the conviction of supporters that he is a martyr, persecuted politically, legally and now physically for trying to make America great again. Steve Scalise, the Republican House majority leader – himself seriously wounded in 2017 by an anti-Republican gunman with a history of aggression and violence – was swift to accuse Democrats of “incendiary rhetoric” that was “fuelling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America”.True incitement cannot be tolerated. Violence must be condemned – as Mr Trump himself failed to do when he joked about the brutal attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul and said it was “common sense” that rioters who stormed the Capitol chanting for the hanging of his vice-president, Mike Pence, were angry.There must also be care that extreme acts by a minority are not used to silence legitimate criticism. There is very good reason to believe that Mr Trump is a threat to American democracy; there is no justification whatsoever to the belief that he should be stopped through violence. Politicians of all stripes must be more careful than ever in their choice of language. It is up to the American public too to make this grim moment mark a turning point for the better, not a slide into something still worse.

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