Trump shooting blame game lays bare America’s bitter political divide

Republicans blame Democrats’ rhetoric for Saturday’s assassination attempt, heaping more fuel onto the fires of fierce polarisation

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Protesters hold a ‘Rally Against Trump!’, organised by Philadelphia Democrats, in Pennsylvania last month. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 2:23pm, 15 Jul 2024Updated: 5:25pm, 15 Jul 2024

Within hours of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, his Republican supporters in Congress claimed they knew exactly who was responsible: Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

Biden’s campaign “rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Senator J.D. Vance, on Trump’s shortlist for vice-president, alleged shortly after Saturday’s shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania, in which the former US leader was wounded and one bystander killed.

Vance’s comments were part of an escalating chorus of Republicans who have pinned the blame on Democrats – even as the Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has yet to identify the shooter’s ideology.

They also heap more fuel onto the fire in a political atmosphere that has long been tense and fiercely polarised.

“Heated rhetoric has come from both sides” in recent years, said Michael Bailey, a political-science professor at Georgetown University.

Police detain a person as supporters of US President Donald Trump protest outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo: AFP

Republicans, for whom gun rights and a rejection of alleged government overreach are key themes, “have been more prone to marry such rhetoric with imagery related to guns”, Bailey noted.

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