Attack on Donald Trump reopens chilling chapter in American politics: US media

Washington: The assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump is a "horrific moment" for America and a "sobering reminder" of the threat that political violence poses to democracy in the country ahead of the high-stakes presidential election, the US media commented on Sunday.

Trump, 78, survived an attempt on his life on Saturday when a young shooter fired multiple shots at him at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, injuring his right ear.

Americans received a sobering reminder on Saturday of the threat that political violence poses to our democracy, The New York Times said.

"It is now incumbent on political leaders of both parties and on Americans individually and collectively, to resist a slide into further violence and the type of extremist language that fuels it. Saturday’s attack should not be taken as a provocation or a justification," it said.

"Americans also must be clear-eyed about the challenge that is confronting this nation. Saturday’s events cannot be written off as an aberration. Violence is infecting and inflecting American political life," the newspaper said.

"Acts of violence have long shadowed American democracy, but they have loomed larger and darker of late. Cultural and political polarisation, the ubiquity of guns and the radicalising power of the internet have all been contributing factors, as this board laid out in its editorial series The Danger Within in 2022. This high-stakes presidential election is further straining the nation’s commitment to the peaceful resolution of political differences," it said.

Democracy requires partisans to accept that the process is more important than the results. Even before Saturday’s events, there were worrying signs that many Americans were failing that essential test, it added.

The assassination attempt is a horrific moment for America that could have been much worse. But we can’t say it comes as a complete surprise. Political hostility and hateful rhetoric have been rising to a decibel level that far too often in the American past has led to violence and attempted murder. Some of us still remember 1968 all too well, The Wall Street Journal said.

The shooter alone is responsible for his actions. But leaders on both sides need to stop describing the stakes of the election in apocalyptic terms. Democracy won’t end if one or the other candidate is elected, it added.

"Fascism is not aborning if Mr. Trump wins, unless you have little faith in American institutions," the paper said.

The targeting of a former president, also the Republican presidential candidate for the November election, at a campaign rally just days before he accepted the Republican nomination is, by definition, an attack on democracy and the right of each American to choose their leaders, CNN said in an opinion piece.

The attempted assassination, which opens a dark new chapter in America’s cursed story of political violence, shook a nation already deeply estranged during one of the most tense periods of its modern history, it said.

While Trump is not currently serving as president, his wounding underscores the ever-present threat that always hangs over the office and those who run for it – and especially for those who claim it, it said.

Trump is likely to face President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in the November election. However, Biden, 81, is under pressure to quit the race following his disastrous debate performance against Trump last month.

Four American presidents have been killed while in office, most recently John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The fact that Trump was attacked ends a 40-year period in which many have assumed that the Secret Service’s expertise had greatly reduced the potential for such outrages – and will cast a pall that will last for years, the news network said.

Trump’s targeting during a presidential campaign drew comparisons to the assassination of Democratic candidate Robert F Kennedy in 1968, a blood-soaked year that also saw the killing of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which will host the same event this year, it said.