What happens now after attempted assassination at Trump rally? U.S. history may have the clues
American history is repeating itself in a most macabre way.
If everything unfolds as expected, Donald Trump will deliver a triumphant speech in Milwaukee next Thursday night to accept the Republican presidential nomination.
Adrenaline will be coursing through that crowd for another reason: His admirers will celebrate his very survival from an apparent campaign-stop assassination attempt.
Literally one block away from the convention site, an uncannily similar event occurred. Another former president, also seeking a comeback, who’d just been struck by a bullet in an attack at a campaign stop celebrated his miraculous survival with adoring supporters.
“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” Teddy Roosevelt told them, in 1912, a few metres from where Trump is scheduled to accept the nomination.
“But it takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”
Roosevelt showed the crowd his blood-stained speaking notes, which may have saved his life by slowing the bullet that slightly punctured his chest.
There’s something else Roosevelt did that day, and we’ll find out quickly whether Trump emulates him now during a fragile moment for American democracy.
He turned the temperature down.
Surrounded by a potential mob, Roosevelt urged everyone to stay peaceful. His supporters wanted action against the gunman, chanting “Kill him!” Roosevelt encouraged first them, then the arresting police officers, to leave the man unharmed. The shooter, John Schrank, was later remanded to a state institution.
It’s what happened north of the border, too, when the leader of the Parti Québécois was targeted by a shooter in 2012. In the aftermath, Pauline Marois maintained rhetoric to avoid stoking more violence.
Trump weighed his words carefully in his first statement on Saturday’s shocking events. He thanked police, said he’d been shot in the ear, extended his condolences to a victim in the crowd and said nothing is known about the now-deceased shooter.
The fear now gripping political violence-watchers
“It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country,” Trump said.
In fact, if only it were incredible.
People who study political violence have been unnerved for a while. Now, this is a scene from the nightmare scenarios that have been playing in their heads.
We’ve already seen congressman Steve Scalise, a Republican, survive a shooting. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, survived a shooting. An intruder bludgeoned Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer in her home.
Nearly one-quarter of U.S. presidents have survived assassination attempts or been killed.
And scholars of threats to democracy have been especially unnerved about the current political climate in the hyper-polarized, hyper-angry United States.
After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, one leading expert in the field, Robert Pape, began conducting regular surveys of thousands of respondents to track the darker corners of the American public mood.
The University of Chicago scholar told CBC News about his latest survey. Conducted last month, it adds sobering context to Saturday’s disturbing event.
He said the survey from June 20 to 24 suggests 10 per cent of American adults agree that use of force is justified to prevent Trump from returning to office.
That’s 26 million people. And one-third of them, Pape said, own guns. On the flip side, he said about seven per cent of American adults, or 18 million people, half of whom own guns, support using force to restore Trump to office.
“The shooting of former president Trump is a consequence of such significant support for political violence in our country,” said Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, adding that retaliatory threats against President Joe Biden are also a concern.
“Political leaders from both parties and at all levels of government — the president, Senate and House leadership, governors and mayors — must immediately condemn political violence from whichever side of politics it arises.”
2 types of political response
Events like Saturday’s can fling a country down different paths, said Michael Miller, a scholar on democratization and democratic decline at George Washington University.
He said there are close parallels in recent history: The stabbing of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, and the shooting of Imran Khan in Pakistan in 2022 — both of whom survived.
“I wouldn’t say either incident changed the country’s politics dramatically,” Miller said.
Bolsonaro went on to win the presidency, then lost it, and his supporters stormed several of Brazil’s political institutions last year.
Then there are more disturbing examples, where acts of violence beget more violence, political instability, democratic crackdowns or worse, like in the aftermath of political assassinations in the U.S. in 1968, coup attempts in Venezuela and Turkey or political violence entrenching 20th-century dictatorships in Europe.
“Sudden violent events can have major negative effects,” Miller said.
“They create a licence in many actors’ minds that they can resort to violence in response because they’re no longer playing a purely constitutional game.
“But it matters a lot how elites respond. They can push to take down the temperature or use it to inflame polarization for their own ends. I’m not optimistic about the direction Trump takes it.”
Numerous U.S. politicians called for calm. They represent untold millions of thoughtful, temperate people in the country.
Some sought answers: Republicans have, for instance, requested that the head of the Secret Service appear for a hearing to discuss what some witnesses at the Pennsylvania shooting scene described as a catastrophic failure.
A witness told the BBC that Trump supporters saw the rifle-toting shooter on the nearby rooftop and tried, and failed, to get Secret Service officers to intervene before the shooting started and they killed the gunman.
Others did what they always do: Water the roots of political hatred in this country, hoping to harvest a few more morsels of attention for themselves.
Witnesses say the shots fired at former U.S. president Donald Trump appeared to come from outside the area secured by the Secret Service. The FBI said it had taken the lead in investigating the attack.
They include anti-Trump accounts on social media wishing he’d been killed, or claiming he staged the attack for political reasons.
They also include, notably, pro-Trump members of the U.S. Congress.
Like one Republican from Georgia, Mike Collins, who suggested Biden should be criminally charged, claiming that the president incited this a few days ago for saying it was time for his own party to stop its infighting and “put Trump in a bull’s-eye.”
Another Georgia Republican blamed Democrats and the media.
“May God have mercy on our enemies because we will NOT,” Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday.
At this point, the whole nation could use such mercy.
This isn’t a Republican problem, or a Democratic problem, but an American problem, said one Republican convention-goer in Milwaukee.
“It’s a sad day in American politics,” said James Mathews, who owns a small business in Alabama.
“Whether it’s Democrat or Republican, that just shouldn’t happen.”
Published at Sun, 14 Jul 2024 01:06:12 +0000
Can homelessness be ended? Prince William says yes — and he’s trying to get others to help
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He apologized for his raspy voice — a result of cheering on England the night before as it captured a spot in Sunday’s Euros 2024 soccer final — but Prince William was firm Thursday in his ongoing effort to promote a cause he has put at the heart of his philanthropic endeavours.
“Homelessness is a complex societal issue, and one that touches the lives of far too many people in our society,” he said.
“However, I truly believe that it can be ended.”
William was speaking at an event in London to mark the first anniversary of his Homewards initiative. The five-year program launched in 2023 by the Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales aims to show that through coalitions of local organizations and charities working together, it’s possible to end homelessness, “making it rare, brief and unrepeated.”
William’s interest in the issue is longstanding — his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, took him to a shelter as a child. He has been patron of Centrepoint, a charity that focuses on ending youth homelessness, since 2005.
There’s no doubt it’s a significant problem. Data shows Britain has the worst rate of homelessness in the developed world, and it has become worse since 2010.
William’s interest also reflects the way in which he and his wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales, have concentrated their philanthropic efforts, seeking to draw people together to work in a limited number of areas — early childhood development, conservation and mental health among them — rather than cast a wider net on a larger range of issues.
“This is what they’ve done through the Royal Foundation — to focus on one or two particular causes and really try and drive some work and activity in that area. And in a sense, homelessness was a natural choice,” said Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert and lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London, in an interview.
In trying to draw people together in such a way, there is precedent, as William’s father, King Charles, when Prince of Wales, also tried to bring people together to tackle issues of the day.
“In a sense [William is] following on from his father and using the convening power … to get different agencies and organizations who are involved in homelessness talking to one another and coming up with solutions,” Prescott said.
“If there’s some take-up from central government, then great. But it’s something for them to take up rather than for William to tell them to do it.”
It would become problematic if a royal were seen to be urging politicians to take specific actions.
Prescott noted that Diana was criticized for appearing on stage with a Labour Party politician and saying something must be done about homelessness.
“This was criticized for being political, and in a political sort of context as well. She was on the platform with politicians, and I think that’s one clue that I don’t think we’ll be seeing many politicians at these events, if any, I would imagine.”
Even royal involvement with an issue such as homelessness has drawn criticism.
The anti-monarchy group Republic has often spoken out against William’s actions.
“The monarchy represents and helps to perpetuate the very inequality that causes the housing crisis to persist. William is part of the problem, and his efforts at promoting himself through limited involvement in homelessness charities needs to stop,” Republic CEO Graham Smith said earlier this year, when plans were announced to build homes for homeless people on William’s Duchy of Cornwall estate in southwestern England.
“Rather than be thankful for a few homes built on Duchy land, which William will profit from, we all need to be demanding the return of the Duchy to full public ownership and an end to the monarchy.”
Royal interest in social issues around housing and homelessness has a long history.
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, was the first president of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes. Through Albert’s patronage, the society showed model housing for the working classes at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
“It’s not unprecedented. Even Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, was a member of two royal commissions, one on the housing of the poor and the other one on the treatment of the elderly,” said Bob Morris, a member of the honorary staff of the constitution unit at University College London, in an interview.
“He attended pretty regularly and when his turn came, asked some sharp and well-informed questions and signed at least one of the royal commission reports, if not the other.”
William’s Homewards initiative has been working in six U.K. locations to form local coalitions.
“Homewards has already established strong foundations, forming wide-ranging local groups of organizations and individuals and focusing minds on measures to prevent people from becoming homeless,” Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, a charity for people experiencing homelessness and a partner in the Homewards initiative, said in a release.
“Crucially, Homewards has sought to put people with lived experience at the heart of its work.”
Still, William acknowledged Thursday there is a long road ahead.
“I created Homewards because I wanted us to look at the issue of homelessness through a different lens: to inspire a movement to prevent people from ever experiencing homelessness in the first place,” he said.
“I know this will take a huge effort. And I know that demonstrating that homelessness is not an inevitable part of our society will take time.”
But in the year since Homewards was set up, he said there has been “an incredible amount of work done” to build foundations for success.
“Coalitions have been built, bringing together over 500 individuals and organizations who are setting ambitious priorities and co-developing new ways of addressing homelessness that are local, relevant and collaborative — something that has never been done before on this scale,” he said.
“Already, a pipeline of nearly 100 homes is being established through the innovative housing projects which will be developed in each location — and believe me — my ambitions alone mean there will be so many more.”
He said there is a lot more work to do.
“The energy and enthusiasm that each individual and organization is bringing to the program, and to showing that it is possible to end homelessness in their local area, is inspiring and I know, together, we can do this.”
Here comes another prime minister
In Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years as monarch, she saw 15 British prime ministers come and go from their weekly audiences with her.
Less than two years into his reign, King Charles is now on to his third prime minister, after the British election on July 4 saw the Labour Party trounce Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives. (Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, lasted a mere 49 days as PM.)
Labour Leader Keir Starmer made the traditional post-election trip to meet the monarch on July 5, and in a ceremony known in palace parlance as the “kissing of hands,” officially became prime minister.
“You must be utterly exhausted and nearly on your knees,” Charles said, in a short video clip the Royal Family posted to YouTube of the moment the King welcomed Starmer to the palace.
“Not much sleep,” Starmer replied.
“Anyway, you’re here,” Charles said.
“It’s a very, sort of, quick changeover, isn’t it?” said Starmer.
“To say the least. And having to get to grips with everything straight away must be quite exhausting,” the King said.
Keir Starmer, whose Labour Party defeated the ruling Conservatives in a general election, met with King Charles on Friday.
The video offered a rare glimpse of a monarch and the prime minister chatting with one another at Buckingham Palace, and stands in stark contrast to what is publicly known about what is said during the regular weekly audiences.
“No notes are taken of that,” Morris said. “We don’t know what goes on in those meetings, but it’s been valued by prime ministers in the past because you’re talking to a [person] who is not your political competitor and you can unburden yourself a bit.”
Some media attention in recent days dusted off details of Starmer as a younger man calling for the abolition of the monarchy.
Starmer has reportedly described that as a youthful indiscretion, and since then has, as Morris noted, accepted a knighthood (from Charles in 2014).
“You will certainly not find anything in the Labour manifesto about abolition of the monarchy,” Morris said.
Speculation swirled throughout Elizabeth’s reign about how she and her prime ministers got along, and which ones were more — or less — in royal favour.
“As Queen Elizabeth matured, then of course she had things that she could say from our own experience to prime ministers…. She tended to be keener on the Commonwealth than her prime ministers,” Morris said. “There were some occasions when she clashed with a prime minister, but usually found a way of circumventing them.”
But arguably, said Prescott, it’s in the monarchy’s interest to be on good terms with the prime minister of the day.
“I think you … saw where the prime minister could be useful to the monarchy in those days after the death of Princess Diana, where it was people from Downing Street … as well as [Prime Minister Tony] Blair himself, who moved things on in that week …. and when perhaps the Queen, for good reason, sort of wasn’t playing her role as head of nation, to some extent, Blair stepped in, but then realized that there was stuff that the Queen had to do and advised her accordingly.
“So I think it shows you how it sort of goes both ways, the relationship between the prime minister and the monarch.”
Elizabeth was heavily criticized for not responding publicly immediately after Diana’s death, but days later did deliver a heartfelt speech on TV, expressing admiration for her former daughter-in-law.
Prescott will also be watching for any signals Starmer’s government may send via King Charles and the Royal Family when it comes to foreign policy, particularly around state and official visits.
“You might see a reorientation of that. It was very clear that the Conservative government used the Royal Family with more state visits in Europe post-Brexit,” he said.
“And of course the King’s first visits were to France and Germany, which was a very clear signal.”
Next Wednesday, however, will see Charles taking part in a significant ceremony much closer to home: the state opening of the new Parliament.
He will deliver the King’s Speech, which will outline the policies and proposed legislation from Starmer’s government for the next session of Parliament.
Princess Anne returns
Princess Anne returned to public duties on Friday, nearly three weeks after she suffered a head injury at her estate in western England.
Anne, an avid equestrian and longtime patron of the Riding for the Disabled Association, visited the group’s national championships, which took place not far from her home.
Michael Bishop, RDA’s chief executive, said the organization was “delighted that she has chosen to join us as she returns to royal duties.”
Anne, 73, became the group’s patron in 1971, and its president in 1986.
King Charles’s sister spent five nights in hospital after suffering a head injury on June 23. The exact cause of the injury was unconfirmed, but her medical team said the injuries were consistent with the potential impact from a horse’s head and legs.
The injury led Anne to cancel a planned trip to Canada that was to begin on June 30 and include a ceremony to commemorate the centennial of the Newfoundland National War Memorial in St. John’s.
Princess Anne has had to postpone numerous upcoming events, including a trip to Newfoundland, after suffering a concussion and other injuries from reportedly being struck by a horse’s head or legs.
Gov. Gen. Mary Simon read a message on Anne’s behalf that described her “deep regret” at being unable to attend.
The visit would have been Anne’s second to Canada within a matter of weeks. In early May, she was in British Columbia, where her engagements included time with the Victoria Therapeutic Riding Association.
— With files from CBC News
Royally quotable
“It’s a bit of nostalgia for me.”
— Prince William, during a visit to the air base where he served in the Royal Air Force between 2010 and 2013.
Royal reads
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Sabrina Cohen-Hatton has gone from rough sleeping as a teenager to visiting the Prince of Wales in Windsor Castle to give him advice on tackling homelessness. [BBC]
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Prince Harry paid an emotional tribute to the global veteran community as he accepted the Pat Tillman Award for Service at the ESPY Awards in Los Angeles. [Newsweek]
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King Charles has upset the pigeon racing community after dropping the monarchy’s official support amid opposition from animal rights activists. [The Guardian]
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A nine-year-old double amputee who missed a garden party at Buckingham Palace because of a traffic jam attended a private gathering with Queen Camilla. [BBC]
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King Charles bumped fists and learned new handshakes in a meeting with the West Indies cricket team. [ITV]
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Published at Sun, 14 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000
