Not even a week has passed since the debate between them Kamala Harris with him Donald Trump, from which it was thought that the US vice president would come out favored. The pre-election period was dominated in these days by fake news about Haitian immigrants, from pop star Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris and after Trump who wrote on social media “I hate Taylor Swift”. And now, the second assassination attempt on Trump.
While there is a lot of heat and “noise” out there, will any of it play a role on Election Day, November 5?
A second assassination attempt
For the second time in just two months, Trump appears to have survived assassination attempt on him, this time by a suspect armed with an “AK-47-style rifle.”
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was reportedly just a few hundred feet from the former president while playing golf in Florida. However, unlike the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, the alleged assailant was located and pursued by Secret Service agents before he could even fire a shot. Trump was not injured.
Donald Trump on assassination attempt: “It was an interesting day…”
Unfortunately, assassinations are not uncommon in US politics. After all, every US president in modern history – including Joe Biden – has faced assassination attempts of various kinds.
Dogs, Cats and Wild Claims
Perhaps the most resonant line from the presidential debate was Trump’s unfounded claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating” cats and dogs, after his running mate JD Vance first made the claims.
Despite city officials repeatedly denying this was the case, Vance later doubled down on his claims. Since then, there have been reports of threats against Haitian members of the community.
The Trump-Vance campaign’s refusal to distance itself from unfounded claims about Springfield’s Haitian community is a clear attempt to keep the focus on immigration, a policy area where most Americans would prefer the Republican approach. We can expect to hear more anti-immigrant rhetoric if the U.S. unemployment rate rises in the coming months.
Does it matter?
In July, the combination of Biden’s poor debate performance, a string of legal victories for Trump, low approval ratings for the Biden-Harris administration, and then the image of a bloodied Trump raising his fist after surviving an assassination attempt in July 2024 led some to believe that Trump was almost certain to be the next president of the United States. In many ways, it would be hard to imagine a series of events that could have benefited his campaign more.
Then, on July 21, Biden dropped out and Harris took over at the top of the presidential ballot, giving Democrats what many called a political “reset.”
Yet despite the unprecedented electoral events — the last time a sitting president decided not to run for reelection, in 1968, occurred before the primaries began in earnest — perhaps the most important takeaway from these events is how little has changed.
Before Biden withdrew from the 2024 ballot, several national polls showed the president trailing Trump (who had recently survived an assassination attempt) by just 1 or 2 percentage points. And before Harris’s successful debate last week, the race was even tighter, with several polls showing Harris trailing Trump, tied with Trump or even slightly ahead of the former president.
Just as the July 13 assassination attempt saw Trump’s approval rating rise by less than 2 percentage points, polls since Harris’s debate performance appear to have shifted in her favor by an average of just less than a percentage point.
Half a year ago, Trump averaged an approval rating of 47 percent. Today, that number is exactly the same. His approval rating has yet to dip below 44 percent or above 49 percent in the past six months—remaining well within the margin of error. In other words, regardless of the facts, Trump’s views—like those of Harris and Biden—are likely to remain largely unchanged.
A once-in-a-century pandemic, an insurgency, criminal convictions and even an assassination attempt may seem seismic to Americans — and to those on the outside looking in — but the calcification of U.S. political polarization remains.
However, given how narrow the margins of the last two presidential elections were—a combined 0.03% of Americans decided the 2020 election—even the most seemingly insignificant events can prove decisive.