USAnalysis

Possible Trump running mate says Biden campaign ‘rhetoric’ to blame for assassination attempt

Shooting has altered expected tone and mood of Republican National Convention in Milwaukee

Secret Service agents setting up security fencing outside the Fiserv Forum, which is scheduled to host the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Secret Service agents setting up security fencing outside the Fiserv Forum, which is scheduled to host the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Keith Duggan's picture
Keith Duggan in Milwaukee
Sun Jul 14 2024 - 18:42

JD Vance, considered the front-runner in the off-stage jousting to become Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, has placed the blame for Saturday’s assassination attempt on the Republican nominee on the “rhetoric” used by the Biden presidential election campaign. His comment, on social media, may be an indicator of the mood at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which begins on Monday.

“Today is not just some isolated incident,” the Ohio senator commented on X shortly after Mr Trump’s head had been grazed by a bullet while he spoke at a rally. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Saturday’s shooting, during which one attendee of the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was killed and several others injured, has completely altered the expected tone and mood of the convention. The selection of the vice-president was to be the main intrigue of a convention which was to be the coronation of Donald Trump as presidential nominee. There has been no announced change to the schedule in which former president Trump is to deliver the keynote acceptance speech on Thursday evening. Except that now he will take to the stage bearing the scars, on his right ear, of an assassination attempt which came within millimetres of taking his life.

The shooting also heightens the complex issues of security in the heavily Democratic city of Milwaukee. Tens of thousands of Republicans began to arrive in the city for what was to have been a celebratory week in which all current polls indicate a successful election campaign. But city and national security were also planning for the arrival of large groups of counter-protesters intent on making their voices heard.

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Some 120 groups of varying ideologies have come together under the Coalition to March on the RNC 2024, with as many as 5,000 people expected to participate in a March on Monday.

The US Secret Service, the FBI and the Milwaukee police department have joined the Southeastern Wisconsin Threat Analysis Center to create a joint threat assessment data base, and plans were made to create an extended buffer zone around the arena where the convention will take place.

JD Vance is among the featured list of speakers, along with senator Marco Rubio and Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, both of whom are also deemed to be prominent in Mr Trump’s list of considerations for vice-president.

Wisconsin delegate Paddy Reiman said the assassination attempt on Mr Trump “will go down in history” and predicted that the aftermath will dominate the mood in Milwaukee over the coming days. “I think people are going to be more attuned, looking around, not feeling so safe any more,” she told AP.

Meanwhile one of the key advisers behind Mr Trump’s election campaign, Chris LaCivita, added to commentary on the shooting and also suggested on X that the critiques of Mr Trump served to pre-empt the atrocity. “For years and even today leftist activists, Democrat donors and now even Joe Biden have made disgusting remarks and descriptions of shooting Donald Trump. It’s high time they be held accountable for it…the best way is through the ballot box.”