It may appear that one of the US’s presidential candidates has been attempted to be killed twice in two months, says the FBI early Monday morning. A man has been arrested after the Secret Service saw an AK-47 assault rifle sticking out of the bushes, just a few hundred meters from where Donald Trump was playing golf. He has been identified by American media, but not official sources. The arrested person has not yet been charged. Ryan Routh has been identified by American media as the police’s suspect in the case. The police in the USA say they stopped a car on the motorway in the vicinity of the golf club. Photo: Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters Also on Monday, Fox News host Sean Hannity came up with the following analysis: – To give you some details about what happened during the shooting, a story that the president has confirmed: they heard pop, pop, pop, pop. They knew it was a shot. – It is a miracle that that man is alive today. The suspect in Monday’s incident is a 58-year-old democrat, who had owned weapons for a long time and had stated his intention to travel to Ukraine to fight in the war there (something he has never done, according to Ukraine). Here is Routh at a memorial to Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv, Ukraine. The photo was taken in 2022. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky / AP There is no recipe for how the politicians in the USA will handle this further, the analyzes published in the American media on Monday are to be believed. But the journalists, and their (sometimes anonymous) contacts, think this will probably affect the election sprint until 5 November. “Baseless claims of guilt” The image of Trump with blood on his face and a fist in the air had a unifying effect on the Republican Party this summer. But the party is reacting to the events on Monday with “a mixture of defiance, rage and baseless allegations of guilt”, write Lisa Kashinsky and Mia McCarthy in Politico. It is still unknown what motive the suspected perpetrator had for the attack, and whether he is criminally liable. – We have to ask ourselves: how was an assassin allowed to get so close to President Trump again, asks Congress representative Elise Stefanik (h) on X after the incident. Photo: ANGELA WEISS / AFP Nevertheless, Republican Mike Waltz has linked the suspected assassination with the Democrats’ political argument in a televised interview on Fox News. – The rhetoric against President Trump, this narrative that he will be the next dictator, the next future Hitler, must stop. Enough is enough, he said late yesterday. He further claims that elected politicians demand “that Trump be stopped at all costs”, “no one can be surprised that these people become radicalized and take action like this”. The Republican Mike Waltz is one of those who already claim that the suspected assassination can be linked to the Democrats’ rhetoric. Photo: Mike Segar / Reuters Trump himself wrote after the events on Monday: “I AM EVEN MORE DETERMINED AFTER ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO TAKE MY LIFE”, “I WILL NEVER SURRENDER”. But Trump does not have the same martyr status on Tuesday as he had in the bloody pictures in July, the Politico journalists believe. They write that he is now politically weaker as an opponent of Kamala Harris. New criticism of the Secret Service The fact that the suspected assassin managed to get to a bush a few hundred meters away from Trump has led to new questions about the security apparatus around him. The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting former presidents, was heavily criticized after Trump was hit by a bullet during a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. The fact that they had strengthened the apparatus with additional agents and more solid intelligence on the ground may have been essential for how it went this time, say “several current and former US officials” to the New York Times. The Secret Service is responsible for Donald Trump’s security. Here is an agent on duty at Trump National Golf Club on September 13. Photo: MARIO TAMA / AFP An agent was only one hole ahead of Trump on the golf course when he caught sight of the barrel of the gun sticking out of a bush, according to local police. President Joe Biden and Vice President (and Trump challenger) Kamala Harris have both highlighted this as a positive change. But not everyone agrees with this: – We have to ask ourselves again how an assassin was able to get so close to President Trump, again, writes the Republican Congress representative Elise Stefanik in a statement. – We still lack answers after the terrible assassination in Pennsylvania, and we are waiting for a clear explanation of what happened in Florida. The Secret Service also secures the event for Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden. Here are two agents during a campaign event in Pennsylvania on September 13. Photo: Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters Former Secret Service agent Michael Matranga, who protected President Barack Obama in his time, describes the incident to the same newspaper as “unprecedented”. He further says that the Secret Service should “seriously consider giving former President Trump the same or equivalent protection as the President of the United States”. Doubts whether many will change their minds Political reporter Stephen Collinson in CNN writes in his analysis that events such as the two assassination attempts could usually generate sympathy and perhaps lead to more votes. – The candidates are fighting for perhaps a few hundred votes in the swing states, and it is unclear how much room Trump has to change his views about himself, writes Collinson. He adds that Trump has been polarizing since he entered politics in 2015, but also believes that he has become more extreme in his rhetoric since July. – The former president will surely use the latest events to substantiate his baseless claims that he is the victim of persecution, he writes further. Several of Trump’s supporters showed up at his home in Mar-A-Lago on Monday night. Photo: Giorgio Viera / Reuters Eirik Løkke, US expert and consultant at Civita, also thinks it is difficult to say what the effect will be. – It is difficult to say how this will develop. What I assume is that the USA is now so polarized that this will not affect the voters very much, he says to news. But Løkke thinks it says something about the danger political figures in the US are in: – This can also lead to other copycats who try to carry out political assassinations in this way. So these are dangerous times. Published 16.09.2024, at 12.10
ttn-69
– A miracle that that man is alive – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
