We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
President Joe Biden addresses the nation about his decision to step back from the 2024 presidential race on July 24, 2024.
Civil Wars and Civil Exits
For a moment last night, America lived up to its best ideals. It often does in the dark hours.
President Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office to explain his reluctant decision to step away from the 2024 campaign — a campaign he was forced to accept, in a humiliating but necessary way, that he could not win — in a rare moment of sacrifice over ego, service over ambition.
Though age has severely diminished Biden’s capacities, it has not diminished his dignity or character.
Character is not something we talk about a lot in politics these days. But as Biden raspily and haltingly defended his presidential record, his vision for the future, and his 50 years of service, he showed genuine character.
Character is more than just toughness, grit, and fortitude amid a fight, though surely it can encompass those qualities. Character is more than just grace in loss, and Biden knows more about that than most, having lost his wife Neilia and his 1-year-old daughter Naomi to a car accident in 1972, and then his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015. Character is what happens after those moments. It’s what you do with the time left, how you reassemble the pieces and build something with purpose. It’s reflected in the ideas you hold and the people you serve, even if those ideas fail and people turn on you. Character is the story your life tells when you might no longer have the strength to tell it yourself.
“Nearly all men can withstand adversity,” President Abraham Lincoln once said, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” You don’t have to agree with what Biden fought for, you don’t have to like his record, and you don’t have to support his party, but last night, President Joseph R. Biden, who still has more power than anyone on earth, passed the character test. And he asked a riven country to try to do the same.
Now let’s turn to the campaign, which, as ever, is a testing ground of character.
Campaign rallies are not known for their subtle rhetoric, so when a local politician is trying to juggle the twin duties of whipping up a partisan crowd while simultaneously kissing their candidate’s butt, it’s usually not surprising they get a little sloppy.
But it’s worth paying attention to what Ohio Sen. George Lang said to a crowd as he introduced former President Donald Trump and JD Vance the other day. Arriving at the podium chanting Trump’s now-famous epizeuxis “fight, fight, fight,” Lang warned of an upcoming civil war if Democrats win the election. “I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County’s JD Vance are the last chance to save our country politically,” Lang said, sweating with enthusiasm in the summer sun. “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” And then, he added a little boost for those prepping for battle. “If we come down to a civil war, I’m glad we got people like Bikers for Trump on our side.”
No one followed Lang on stage and pushed back or suggested it was horrendously dangerous rhetoric. It wasn’t until much later when the recklessness of the comments began to circulate more widely that Lang was forced to apologize.
“Remarks I made earlier today at a rally in Middletown do not accurately reflect my view,” Lang said, as if somehow his mouth had gone rogue from his brain. “I regret the divisive remarks I made in the excitement of the moment on stage. Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included."
Amen to that.
Still, fears of a second civil war permeate the campaign, and while I don’t normally hyperventilate over these hypothetical, partisan-stoked fears because the institutions in the US have mostly proven to be resilient, the horrific assassination attempt on Trump and the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have made the descent in political violence a genuine scenario that demands attention. Stable democracies, like bankruptcy, end in two ways: gradually, and then suddenly.
People in the US are getting used to this sort of rhetoric by now — though normalizing it is one of the most dangerous signs of decline — but people outside the US, especially in the country’s closest allies, are deeply apprehensive. Is the US really inching toward a civil war?
To find out, we partnered on a poll with David Coletto, CEO and chair of Abacus Data, and the results are unsettling. Thirty-nine percent of Canadians say it is likely that the United States will descend into civil war, while another 23% believe it is somewhat likely. 39%? Yes. The numbers are starker among young people, with 48% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 saying a civil war is likely.
“Canadians are watching the increasing polarization and political violence in the US, and many of them are not shutting the door to that division escalating into full-scale civil war,” Coletto says. “Younger Canadians, in particular, are inclined to think that the very worst outcome is at least a possibility.”
While the polling figures are accurate, let’s hope the sentiments are wrong.
Abacus also asked about mandatory retirement ages for politicians in the wake of Biden’s agonizing decision to step aside and, again, most Canadians heartily agree that he is too old to lead. Seventy-three percent believe there should be a maximum age for a president or prime minister. What age? 28% say 71-plus while 48% say somewhere between 61 and 70, which is surprising.
“The whole Joe Biden saga put into clear perspective the effect aging can have on leaders charged with the most important executive functions in the world,” Coletto says. “Most Canadians think political leaders have a best-before date, and the average age of a president or prime minister is around the usual age of retirement, which is 65.”
You can see the full poll results and Coletto’s comments about it here. GZERO will continue to work with Abacus Data, a well-respected Canadian polling firm, to explore how Canadians and Americans feel about their relationship, the US election, and more in the coming 100 days. Check out their work here.
President Joe Biden addresses the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on July 24, 2024, about his decision to drop his Democratic presidential reelection bid.
Biden passes the torch to veep and voters
In his first address to the nation since ending his reelection bid last weekend, President Joe Biden framed his decision to bow out of the race as a sacrifice for the sake of American democracy.
“I revere this office but I love my country more,” he said in a historically minded address from the Oval Office on Wednesday night. “This task of perfecting our union is not about me … it’s about ‘we the people.’”
While calling for unity, he framed the November election as a pivotal choice for American voters between “hope or hate” and said that while he felt his experience and record justified another term, it was time to pass the torch to “a new generation of leaders.” Vice President Kamala Harris, he said, is “experienced, tough, and capable.”
To help shape her campaign, he pledged to focus his remaining months in office on key Democratic themes: protecting the right to abortion, reducing gun violence, accelerating the fight against climate change, brokering a cease-fire in Gaza, and reducing prescription drug prices.
He also reiterated his intention to reform the Supreme Court – with term limits for justices and an ethics code likely to be on the agenda.
Why Biden’s exit gives Democrats a fighting chance
I have little doubt that President Joe Biden’s belated but essential decision to bow out of the 2024 presidential election on Sunday will go down in history as a patriotic act.
Following his infamous debate performance on June 27, an overwhelming majority of Americans – including two-thirds of Democrats – came to the conclusion that the president was no longer physically and mentally fit to serve another four-year term in office. As things stood last Saturday, Donald Trump – fresh off a failed assassination attempt and a triumphant Republican convention – looked set to retake the White House and likely control both houses of Congress, with little an ailing Biden could do to turn things around.
By finally agreeing to step down when his term ends in January, Biden jolted the race 100 days out and gave his party a fighting chance to protect the country – and the world – from what he sees as the existential threat of an unrestrained Trump. Only he had the power to do that, and when push came to shove (and there was plenty of shoving), he met the moment. It was a fitting capstone to a lifetime of public service.
This is what leadership looks like. Contrary to what many are claiming, there was nothing inevitable about Biden’s decision to withdraw. Yes, he was under immense pressure from his party and the media to step down. Yes, all evidence pointed toward near-certain disaster in November if he stayed on. Yes, his legacy was on the line. And yet … he still had a choice. His exit was not preordained. No one forced his hand – in fact, no one could force his hand. It was entirely up to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden alone, to do the right thing. This couldn’t have been easy – if it was, everyone would do it. And we know for a fact that not everyone would’ve made the same choice – least of all Trump, a man who is constitutionally incapable of putting party and country above himself.
Did Biden come to his decision reluctantly, and only after weeks spent in anger and denial? No doubt. It’s hard enough for anyone to voluntarily give up power, but it’s even harder for a person with Biden’s life history who’s also coming to terms with his own mortality. Should he have withdrawn much sooner? Absolutely – I never thought he should have run for reelection in the first place, and I said so publicly many times. Will this delay end up costing Democrats the election? It’s possible, though we may never know.
But we shouldn’t forget the “better” in “better late than never.” What matters most is that he finally got there. Biden could’ve held on until the bitter end, consequences be damned. Instead, he chose to put America first. It was a decision worthy of a leader. Not a winner, but a leader. He deserves credit for it – as does the Democratic Party, which has shown itself to be a much healthier and more functional institution than anyone thought. Can anyone seriously imagine today’s GOP launching a coordinated pressure campaign to depose Trump, even though so many Republicans privately criticize him as unfit and believe him to be an electoral drag?
It gives me a little hope in a country where politicians don’t often do the right thing, and where political parties all too easily bend to the will of their leaders even when it becomes clear they serve only themselves.
Harris or bust. Shortly after announcing his withdrawal, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the nomination. The entire Democratic establishment – with the notable exception of Barack Obama – quickly followed suit and rallied behind her. Within 24 hours, Harris had been endorsed by every viable potential challenger as well as an overwhelming majority of Democratic governors, members of Congress, and state party chairs. By Monday evening, her campaign had raised $150 million from major donors and $81 million from small donors, and she had secured more than enough pledged delegates to become the party’s presumptive nominee.
Although an ostensibly competitive and democratically legitimate nomination process would have ultimately benefitted Democrats by ensuring the winner had what it takes to take on Trump and appeal to a broad swath of voters, the speed with which the party coalesced around Harris ensures next month’s convention in Chicago will be little more than a coronation ceremony. With only 54 delegates currently undecided and a minimum of 300 needed for any would-be nominee to compete, it’s impossible to imagine a challenger not named Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips emerging.
And that’s … not a disaster for the Democrats. Harris may not have been the best possible candidate Democrats could’ve put forward a year (or four) ago, but she was the most viable candidate to replace Biden, unite the party, and avoid a down-ballot bloodbath at this late stage.
What can be, unburdened by what has been? The question now is not whether there was a better Democratic candidate than Harris, but whether Harris can beat Trump. And on that front, the jury is still out. We simply don’t have enough recent polling data on this matchup yet to get a decent idea of where things stand today.
Here’s what we do know: This is an incredibly tough environment for an incumbent’s successor, with a majority of voters telling pollsters they are unhappy with the state of the country. And Harris is no Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagan – a generational talent with the charisma and vision to work political miracles. So she starts as the underdog accordingly. But off the bat, she has dramatically better odds than Biden because she solves the president’s biggest electability challenge: his age. And she has more upside than Trump, who remains a historically unpopular candidate with a hard ceiling of 45% of national support. By contrast, nearly 10% of Americans don’t even have an opinion of her yet, so she has room to define herself.
Can Harris break above Trump’s ceiling? She’s neither a proven national candidate nor a distinguished campaigner, having fizzled out before reaching the Iowa caucus during the 2020 presidential primaries. She has plenty of weaknesses for Republicans to exploit, including unpopular Biden administration policies (notably on the border) for which voters may blame her. And there’s a chance she could lose more older, white, and moderate working-class voters relative to Biden than she picks up young, nonwhite, and progressive ones.
But at 59, Harris is able to string together full sentences, give cogent stump speeches, campaign vigorously, and effectively deliver the abortion and democracy messages that worked well for Democrats in 2022. She can also play offense on Trump’s age – he’s 78 – and mental fitness, now an exclusively Republican liability that 50% of all voters found disqualifying in the former president nary a week ago.
How this will all net out in November, no one knows yet. Think about all that’s happened in the last two weeks, and imagine all that could change in the next 100 days. That’s an eternity in US politics – certainly longer than entire general election campaigns normally take in most other democracies.
All we can say for sure is Biden has given the Democrats a fighting chance and made the election both more competitive and more uncertain than it was a week ago.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris smiles as she speaks at her Presidential Campaign headquarters in Wilmington, DE, U.S., July 22, 2024.
Harris makes her campaign debut
On Monday, her first full day in the race, Vice President Kamala Harris secured the majority of Democratic National Convention delegates, meaning she will likely soon become the party's nominee.
How it happened: The delegates, who include party officials, activists, volunteers, and lawmakers, decided to lock down the nomination by circulating a Google form to vote on whether to endorse her.
The news came after Harris made her first public appearance since President Joe Biden left the 2024 presidential race. Speaking at the White House during an event to celebrate the NCAA championship teams, Harris praised the president’s accomplishments and said his decision to drop out on Sunday was motivated by a “deep love of our country.”
She took to the stage with all the confidence of someone who had reportedly raised over $200 million in just 24 hours, $150 million from major donors and $81 million from small donors. The Democratic Party donation platform ActBlue reported that the number of small donors marked “the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle.”
Later in the day, speaking from her campaign headquarters in Delaware, Harris offered a peek at how her campaign will grapple with Donald Trump, framing his economic plans as a sop to the wealthy while distinguishing her background as a prosecutor from her opponent’s criminal convictions and other legal troubles. “Hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said. “In this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his.”
She also gained the endorsement of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who urged her colleagues to quickly unify behind the vice president. Pelosi is the highest-ranking Democrat to endorse Harris, and all her would-be challengers have already pledged their support.
But two other top democrats, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York,continue to hold out, saying that, as of now, they are not endorsing Harris but respecting her wish to “earn” the nomination through an open and competitive process. Former President Barack Obama has also not endorsed her.
Harris’s strengths and weaknesses
Harris, at 59, injects relative youth into the campaign. This not only renders the GOP attacks on 81-year-old Biden irrelevant, but it’s also bringing a fresh energy to the race. Her team is leaning into the endorsement “Kamala is brat” from millennial pop star Charli XCX (originator of the “Brat summer” trend), for example, and her supporters are dubbing themselves the KHive, an homage to Beyoncé’s “Beyhive.”
Harris will also highlight her career as a prosecutor, contrasting herself with Trump, a convicted felon, and complicating the GOP’s focus on “law and order.” But her record also enables both progressives and conservatives to point to times when she was either too tough, or not tough enough, on crime.
The GOP is especially likely to highlight a decision she made as San Francisco District Attorney to not seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing a police officer in 2004.
Harris is also a pro-choice woman, which could be an advantage in the post-Roe era in which ballot measures to protect abortion rights have generally benefited Democratic candidates. Whereas Biden rarely used the word abortion, Harris has visited an abortion clinic on the campaign trail.
But she is also, as a Black woman, likely to face disadvantages in a country where women and Black candidates are often held to a more critical standard. The right, in particular, has recently taken square aim at D.E.I. programs, and in that vein is already questioning the merit of Harris’s elevation to the vice presidency in 2020.
The GOP can also use Biden’s unpopularity against her, specifically on issues like the economy and immigration. As VP, Harris was given the southern border as a portion of her issue portfolio. Whether there is daylight between Biden and Harris’s foreign policy remains an unknown, owing to her limited track record on international affairs. But she will face an early campaign test this week, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Washington on Monday for a three-day visit. Harris pointedly announced that she will not preside over Netanyahu’s address to Congress but will meet with him privately later in the week.
Trump's pick for VP: JD Vance
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
President Trump has made his VP selection, JD Vance, Senator from Ohio, a 39-year-old who rose to prominence as the author of a book explaining the troubles of the white working class who voted for Trump in 2016, to a much broader population of Americans who were at the time, struggling to understand how Trump pulled off his surprising victory. Vance then reinvented himself as an investor and then a prominent Trump critic, warning about Trump's dangers to America, and saying that he is America's Hitler. And then went on to reinvent himself yet again as a populist champion of the working class, running for Senate in the seat he ended up winning.
Vance is obviously extremely smart. He's a Yale law graduate, and what he's going to bring to the Trump campaign is to complement the populist energy that President Trump brings. Vance has been an outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine, he has been somebody who's questioned how much the Republican Party has done over the years for the US corporate community, meaning he's going to bring probably an anti-trade and even potentially a tax-hiking voice into the White House. And he's going to instantly become a target for the campaign of President Joe Biden, who will happily pull out all of Vance's old quotes criticizing Donald Trump, even though Vance now credibly says he's been converted to Trumpism.
They're also going to try to attempt to tie Vance to Project 2025, which is a white paper introduced by the Heritage Foundation that introduces all of Trump's plans that he plans to do as president, many of which will be very closely aligned with the persona that J.D. Vance dug out in the Senate. Now, I should also say that persona has been bipartisan at times, as Vance has teamed up with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on several populist causes, including cracking down on big banks. So, Vance is probably one of the more interesting people in American politics today. He's young enough to be a credible presidential candidate in four years at the end of a second Trump term, and he's going to be a lightning rod for controversy.
Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more on the Republican National Convention this week.
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump is assisted by the Secret Service after gunfire rang out during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, PA, on July 13, 2024.
Electoral violence comes out of the shadows
The brazen assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump this weekend has pulled from the shadows an inevitable implication of the country’s polarization: the risk of political violence. In this consequential US election year, with questions of institutional legitimacy hanging in the air, misinformation flooding social media, and worries about the fitness of at least one of the candidates, we have now been alerted to how real the threat of violence is for the months ahead.
Elections offer voters an opportunity to express something fundamental about what they expect from their government. This is at least the theoretical underpinning for conducting elections. But in each election, losers also have a responsibility. At its core, democracy is a system in which groups lose elections. Votes are held, results are counted and respected, and turnovers take place. Losers consent to being losers in any given election cycle because they believe they will have the opportunity to be winners in the future.
If, however, the institutional framework does not allow losers to become winners later, the system’s legitimacy erodes. Losers may withdraw their consent and pursue alternative strategies to access power. Sometimes this leads to boycotting elections, but sometimes the strategy is the use of force.
When winners repeatedly win and losers repeatedly lose, or if winners are perceived to repeatedly win and losers to lose, ballots may be replaced by bullets. In fact, according to data from the National Elections Across Democracy and Autocracy Dataset, in more than 4,000 global elections between 1945 and 2020, just under 19% of them involved significant violence. Nearly one in five elections over the past 75 years turned violent. Already in this pivotal election year, we have seen violence in the run-up to elections in Senegal, Pakistan, South Africa, Mexico (at historic rates), and France.
In the US, grievances that have been stoked around the legitimacy of the system and how well it is serving voters, travel through the existing fault lines in American politics – particularly political party identification – activating them further. It is now a near-truism that there is little common ground between the two political sides, and the gap is widening.Survey data from 2022 and 2023 has repeatedly found that a wide swath of the US population believes the system is rigged, and as much as a quarter of those polled agreed that it may soon be time to take up arms against the government. In 2021, these realities culminated in the Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol. In 2024, this blueprint heightens the likelihood of civil unrest and violence across the US in the lead-up to and, depending on the outcome, after the election.
The name Thomas Matthew Crooks will now go down in the annals of US history alongside John Hinckley Jr. and Lee Harvey Oswald. While very little is currently known about what motivated Crooks’ attempt, lone-offender terrorism has become all too common. It speaks to a broader thread of radicalization that has emerged from US polarization – as political parties no longer speak to the same set of facts and individuals find themselves moving towards the extremes.
“Lone actors are difficult to detect and disrupt because of their lack of affiliation,” according to the2024 US Intelligence Community’s Annual Threat Assessment. “While these violent extremists tend to leverage simple attack methods, they can have devastating, outsized consequences.”
Yet it would be a mistake to focus too narrowly on Crooks’ character or political affiliation in attempting to make sense of the current US political climate. The polarization, the movement to the poles, the rising radicalization – are not just left (including ecological or animal-rights extremism, anarchists) or right (including racially or ethnically motivated extremism) problems. They are brewing on both sides of the aisle, especially as the center has become hollowed out.
When Trump was reported to have shouted “Fight” after being pierced by a bullet on Saturday, he was being heard. His message resonated with those who want to see him be returned to the White House in November, and those who just as desperately want to see him lose.
Security will be stepped up at rallies, this week’s Republican National Convention, August’s Democratic National Convention, and across all campaign stops. But as grievances grow, as fight talk and candidate fitness persist, so too will the shadow of political violence.
Lindsay Newman is the practice head of Global Macro, Geopolitics for Eurasia Group and is based in London. She writes the Views on America column for GZERO.
After Trump attack, will the US unite?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a quick take to kick off your week. Still talking very much about the United States, the elections, the assassination attempt on former President Trump. We now have the Republican National Convention kicking off in Milwaukee. And is it possible that anything good can come from this most tragic event and very close to a world changing event?
I wish I could say yes. I certainly was heartened to see in the initial hours after the attack that the president of the United States strongly condemned it, called for unity, a very nonpartisan statement, pulled down campaign ads and stopped with planned events for the president and vice president. This is no time to be campaigning. I saw the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, did the same in a statement that he made publicly a few hours later. And it's good to hear from former President Trump, that he is changing his speech and wants it to be a less divisive and a more unifying speech.
All of that sounds promising, and there is an opportunity here. But I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical. I think that the divisions in the country are too deep, and the weaponization and of the politics has come from inside the House. It's not from the Russians or the Iranians or the Chinese. It's from American citizens. And that's very likely to continue. When you say that former President Trump is a dictator and that if you elect him, the US will become a dictatorship, and you compare him to Hitler, then it is understandable that many people would view it as patriotic to do everything possible to stop him. If he is an existential threat to the country, then he must be stopped by all means. And if it is true that Biden and the Democrats will destroy the country, and we'll have World War III and the country will be gone if they're elected as Trump has said, then you have to stop them. You have to do everything possible to stop them.
And in that regard, I think this is not going to look like 9/11, where after an external threat, the country rallied together and said never again and meant it, made a lot of mistakes, of course, trillions of dollars and a failed war in Iraq, a failed war in Afghanistan. But it was unifying for America. The response to 9/11 was not red or blue. It was not left or right. It was all Americans, and waving a flag was something that all Americans were proud of and did not see in any way as polarized. I think this is different. I think this is a lot more like what we saw on January 6th. January 6th, you have a lot of people that were outraged, Democrats and Republicans outraged with the violence that they saw in the Capitol building with the illegal insurrection and attempt to overturn a legitimate vote.
And you saw the speeches that were made by Senator McConnell and many others that said that this would not stand. But in a short period of time, it became politicized. It became weaponized, it became Democrats saying one thing and Republicans saying another. And we're now at the point that the January 6th insurrection is singing the national anthem are seen as patriots by the MAGA right. And not only does Trump play that at rallies, but he salutes it. That is, I fear, what's going to happen in the United States in the next four months of this election. I want to see the country come together. I want everyone to recognize that the rhetoric is dangerous and leads to violence and that the US is not on the verge of becoming a dictatorship, and that Trump is not the second coming of Hitler, and that political violence in all of its forms in the United States is something that we as a democracy can't tolerate that. But I don't believe that's where we're heading. I think it is, unfortunately, much more likely that we are going to revert to an “us” versus “them” diatribe.
It is going to be an incredibly polarized election, and people really do feel like democracy at stake. 75% of Americans, when asked, believe that democracy of the United States is at stake with this election in November. The problem is, of course, they don't agree on who's behind that and who's responsible. 25% of Americans agree that it's patriotic to turn to violence in this environment to protect the country. And that doesn't mean that 25% of the people are prepared to actually take action on it. But the level of sympathy, private sympathy and public sympathy is an awful lot higher than the number of people that publicly said, “Oh my God, this is horrible, and nothing like this should ever happen.” And everybody that's watching this knows that.
And so, I fear, that we are not going to learn the right lesson from this near assassination. I'd love to see Trump himself prove me wrong, and we'll see, what the speech is like. But there have been many times, of course, over Trump's presidency, it's like now he's a leader, now he's presidential. And of course, the reality is that Trump is much less of a leader than he is a winner. And Trump won the presidency by dividing America, by taking advantage of the existing divisions and playing on them and preying on them, that he refers to others, his political opponents, as losers. Much more focused on that than fellow citizens. And the need for that to change is immediate and immense. The United States cannot be a country of winners and losers. The United States has to be a team with leaders that we respect. And there are many countries around the world, many democracies around the world, that have that manifestation that feels much more like that.
But the United States today does not. And that's fundamentally why the US is a democracy in crisis and is uniquely in crisis compared to all the other democracies in the world that have had their elections over the past months with no problem at all. It's not where we are right now in the US. We can't normalize this. We can't accept it. We have to be willing to fight together for our democracy, as opposed to fight each other and destroy our democracy. I will say I'm a little offended that President Putin thinks we need his help to destroy democracy. We're more than capable of doing that ourselves. Russians. Stay the hell out. But, seriously, this is a time that we need a lot more from Americans being together.
And that is not the way that we define our political system right now. So that's my honest take on this. I hope I'm wrong. My analysis is not where I want the country to go. And it's not where I'll work on the country to go.
So, I'll be back and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Did Saturday’s shooting make Trump unstoppable? ›
- Donald Trump survives assassination attempt. What happens next? ›
- Trump, Reagan, Roosevelt: Does surviving an assassin’s bullet help at the polls? ›
- Breaking news: Trump shot in apparent assassination attempt ›
- Trump, Biden & the US election: What could be next? - GZERO Media ›
- Biden drops out of 2024 presidential race - GZERO Media ›
- With Biden out, can Kamala Harris defeat Trump? - GZERO Media ›
- How will the summer of 2024 be remembered in US history? - GZERO Media ›
Former President Donald Trump, with his face bloodied by a shot that hit his right ear, raises his fist as he's rushed from a rally stage in Butler, PA.
Donald Trump survives assassination attempt. What happens next?
What happened: Shots rang out at a rally for Donald Trump on Saturday in Butler, PA. The former president – who was speaking at the podium – dropped to the ground and was surrounded by the Secret Service before standing with what appeared to be blood dripping from the right side of his face. He then pumped his fist into the air and was whisked away by his guards.
The Secret Service issued a statement Saturday evening indicating that the shooter aimed from atop a nearby rooftop and was “neutralized,” and that one spectator was killed while another two were critically injured. The FBI has identified the suspected shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old registered Republican from Bethel Park, PA.
A few hours after being rushed from the scene, Trump took to Truth Social to thank the Secret Service. His upper right ear was hit by a bullet, he explained. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he wrote. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
The United States has not seen this level of political violence since the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981 in Washington, DC.
President Joe Biden was quick to respond to the violence, saying that he is “grateful to hear that [Trump is] safe and doing well” and that he’s “praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information.”
“There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it,” Biden emphasized.
The Biden campaign has reportedly suspended its campaign ads, and elected officials on both sides of the aisle have condemned the shooting, denouncing political violence and hoping for Trump’s recovery.
Eurasia Group and GZERO President Ian Bremmer says it’s essential that everyone across the American political spectrum denounce the violence. “Ideally, that is done in a bipartisan manner, that is done in Congress, in the House, and in the Senate. Not with individual posts, and comments, and tweets, but from the entirety of a joint session condemning it and working for peace,” he says. “That’s what the country needs.”
What to expect: Trump’s quick reaction and defiant fist pump will likely cement his image as a political martyr – and benefit his campaign in the runup to the November election. “That response, and being caught on tape,” says Bremmer, “is going to be a rally for his people for a long time.” All eyes will be on Trump’s appearance at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which gets underway on Monday.
It may also lead to a slew of conspiracy theories that the Democratic Party was responsible, while Democrats are likely to wonder whether it was staged by the Trump campaign to boost him in the polls.
While the motivation of the shooter remains unknown, political tensions have been rising in the United States in recent years. Nearly 25% of Americans agree that “patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” and 75% believe that American democracy is at risk in the 2024 presidential election.
Against that backdrop, and with political extremism and disinformation having been weaponized through the media landscape, especially social media, Bremmer says today’s attempt on Trump’s life means “we should be prepared for more violence.”