The Miracle Survivor vs. the Old Man

In the hours that followed the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, one very small sentence in an account by a New York Times journalist who was there at the scene caught my attention.

This journalist watched, with his own eyes, the Republican candidate raise his fist, defiant, before leaving the scene under heavy escort. It was then that he heard a man shout, “Trump was just elected today, folks. He is a martyr.”

Up to now, one of the best ways to evaluate the race between Joe Biden and Trump was to study political cartoons. The former was often depicted as an old man in a wheelchair; the latter, as a criminal in an orange jumpsuit, or a madman in a straitjacket.

All that has changed. In the left corner, there is still the old man.

But in the right, there is now the indomitable Republican. The miracle survivor. The martyr, even, in the eyes of some. A politician whose air of invincibility is even more evident than before. A politician who, under these circumstances, is becoming easier to support openly —the billionaire Elon Musk, for example, has just publicly offered him his official endorsement.

He is a politician who should be able to mobilize his supporters even more easily. Many Republican voters will probably vote for him with even greater fervor in November. And, lest we forget, God presumably is a factor in the equation.

This is not a joke. Within the Christian right, before the assassination attempt, some supporters had already spoken of Trump as being “chosen.” And now the Republican candidate himself is claiming, “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”

God’s chosen one. This theory is bound to attract more followers.

Another fundamental change is that Trump will now be much more difficult to criticize — at least temporarily. Several Republicans have already begun to hold Democrats responsible for the assassination attempt. The Democrats’ depiction of the Republican candidate as a danger to American democracy endangered Trump.

Trump and his allies will be tempted to continue this winning formula in the coming weeks.

Paradoxically, they themselves will not hesitate to maintain that it is Biden who is the danger to democracy in America.

It remains to be seen what the Republican speeches will be like this week at their convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One thing is certain, they are not going to pull any punches.

For their part, over the next few days, the Democrats will largely continue to denounce the assassination attempt. “Everybody must condemn” what took place, as Biden rightly declared.

Then, with less than four months until the presidential election, the moment will come when the political jousting will resume. An election campaign is a vicious fight. There is no way out of it.

But there will be something different for the Democrats. Now that the context has changed, anyone wishing to criticize the Republican candidate in the weeks to come will be walking on eggshells. Obviously, it is not easy to fight an adversary when one is forced to wear kid gloves.

Even before the tragic event, the American political sphere had already been shaken up. The June 27 presidential debate in Atlanta was a pivotal moment in the race for the White House. Since then, and right up to Saturday’s tragedy, Biden’s slips, faux pas, lapses, hesitations and, more broadly, his misfortunes have eclipsed everything else.

And Trump took advantage.

Every one of Biden’s public appearances over the past two weeks has been scrutinized under a microscope. Dissected. Analyzed. Systematically critiqued.

What has also changed is that now there is a marked difference between the way in which Democrats have been infighting over their choice of candidate, and the cohesion exhibited by Republicans. It might be said that anyone who dares to break ranks within Trump’s party is outright excommunicated. Which is true. But in politics, means matter little, it is results that count. Republicans are united, the Democrats are not.

Over the past two weeks, there has been an imbalance in media coverage between picking at Biden’s boo-boos and those of Trump. This will likely not improve in the short term.

Trump will find himself in the limelight all week during the Republican convention. And if they do not go soft on the Democrats, one can expect the Republican candidate to be treated like a superstar. They will praise Trump, the miracle survivor, from the beginning to the end of the affair, as though he were the eighth wonder of the world.

Even the Republican candidate’s most tenacious rival in the race for the party nomination, Nikki Haley, will take the stage. Haley had not, up to now, been invited to the convention. She was no longer in Trump’s good graces. But post-attack, she, too, will sing the candidate’s praises in Milwaukee.

The Republican candidate should thus end the week even stronger and more formidable than ever.

The contrast between Trump and Biden is sharper today than it was yesterday. And certainly less so than tomorrow. It is a nightmare scenario for the Democrats, who may ultimately have only one viable outcome: that their candidate hangs up his boots.