Not again

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September 17, 2024

Stephen Collinson, Caitlin Hu and Shelby Rose

Not again

Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump, was arrested on Sunday in Florida. (Martin County Sheriff's Office)

In 1975, President Gerald Ford escaped two assassination attempts within 17 days, in a spree of political violence notable even for the United States.

On September 5 of that year, Ford was in Sacramento, California. He was saved by a Secret Service agent who stopped a woman with a gun before she could fire as he greeted a crowd. The woman Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme was a follower of the serial killer Charles Manson and served 34 years of a life sentence before being released on parole in 2009.

A few weeks later, on September 22, Ford was again in California, this time in San Francisco, when a bystander likely saved his life by grabbing the arm of another woman, Sara Jane Moore, as she fired at the president. A bullet just missed Ford's head. Moore pleaded guilty to attempted assassination and was paroled in 2007, a year after Ford died.

Ford's near brushes with death are perhaps the closet modern historical equivalent to the two attempts on former President Donald Trump's life. On Sunday, two months after a bullet grazed the Republican nominee's ear at a rally in Pennsylvania, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle sticking out of a fence at one of Trump's Florida golf courses as the ex-president played a round.

The alleged would-be assassin fled the scene but was arrested shortly afterwards while driving on a highway away from Palm Beach. Authorities think that the man, Ryan Wesley Routh, was planning to attack Trump when he came within range. Routh had criticized the ex-president on social media and is a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia. Trump has pledged to end the conflict if he is elected president in November, on terms that would almost certainly favor Russia.

The second apparent attempt to kill the former president in two months was a reminder of the undercurrent of violence that has long haunted US politics. It has sparked debate in Washington over whether Trump's security cover is sufficient. He currently gets a smaller Secret Service retinue than the president since he's left office, but at the same time he's clearly at risk.

The incident also sparked an immediate and inflammatory debate over who is to blame for the tense atmosphere running up to the election. Trump blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his rival for the presidency, for the thwarted attack. "He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it," the former president told Fox Digital, referring to the suspect. "Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country."

It's true that Biden and Harris have criticized Trump, but they've been focusing on the divisive rhetoric that he himself is guilty of and are warning that a president who incited his crowd to attack the US Capitol has no place in the Oval Office.

Trump is demonstrably the most inflammatory presidential candidate and ex-president of the modern age. So, while it should disgust anyone who believes in democracy that a candidate for the highest office should run in fear of his life, he's a perpetrator as well as a victim of America's toxic political culture.

The world and America

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the country's military to increase its number of troops by 180,000.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Yemen's Houthis face a "heavy price" after the group fired a missile deep into Israel.

A mayoral debate in the Brazilian city of São Paulo turned ugly when one of the candidates attacked a rival with a chair.

And Zimbabwe authorized a mass elephant slaughter to feed citizens left hungry by its worst drought in decades.

Meanwhile in America, the Ohio State Highway Patrol was deployed to monitor schools in the city of Springfield after they received 33 bomb threats since late last week.

The Biden administration touted another month of low border crossings, citing recent executive action curbing asylum access at the US southern border.

And floodwater surged into homes, stranded vehicles and forced water rescues in coastal North Carolina.

'I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT'

This is the text of a social media post that Trump sent out on Sunday shortly before heading to the golf course where his would-be assassin was waiting. The former president is clearly still fuming that pop megastar Taylor Swift, who has millions of young followers in the US, endorsed Harris shortly after she debated Trump a week ago.

Trump and Vance double down on false story about Haitians eating dogs and cats

Before Sunday's assassination attempt, Trump and his running mate JD Vance had been embracing baseless rumors that Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, are killing and eating pet dogs and cats as well as geese from city parks. The slander lit up conservative media last week and Trump raised it in the debate, even though city and state officials, including some Republicans have categorically said that there is no evidence that it's true.

The Trump/Vance strategy characterizes an increasingly extreme platform being built by Trump and associates. It represents an apparent bet that provoking divisions will widen his edge on immigration over Democrat nominee Kamala Harris in a way that could be decisive in a tight election. And the race-based tone of the GOP nominee's campaign has deeper overtones, given that the vice president is a woman of color.

On CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Vance argued that he was simply surfacing complaints by his constituents -- despite local officials finding no evidence to substantiate the claims about their Haitian neighbors. And he angrily refuted claims that bomb threats made against the city after he and Trump stated circulating the false rumors had anything to do with them. Vance told Dana Bash: "This town has suffered terribly under the problem -- under the policies of Kamala Harris," he said.

The influx of migrants to Springfield Ohio, has strained local services, including hospitals and has exacerbated long-standing problems with the availability of housing, according to state officials from both parties. But some people in the city told CNN last week that they are dismayed about the way their situation has been drawn into the poisoned rhetoric of the presidential campaign.

On Friday, for example, Trump vowed to deport the Haitian migrants -- who are in Springfield legally under programs that grant them temporary protected status from their homeland's crime and violence -- to Venezuela. The move would be a flagrant violation of US law, but is in keeping with the increasingly autocratic and hardline plans of a possible president who has threatened to jail opponents.

Thanks for reading.

On Tuesday, US Sen. Chuck Grassley -- currently the oldest member of the US Senate -- turns 91. Fashion Week kicks off in Milan, Italy.