Trump’s bloodied, defiant image after shooting pumps up his base

By Nancy Cook

A moment of terrifying political violence at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday instantly turned into a piece of Donald Trump iconography that’s likely to turbocharge his presidential bid.

Images of a defiant Trump — with his fist raised over his head and his bloody right ear, as Secret Service agents surround him and the American flag waving in the background — are blazing across social media and television.

His supporters, many of whom viewed him as a movement figure and martyr long before the violence on Saturday, seized on the photos as a metaphor for the former president’s resiliency.

A bullet pierced the upper part of his right ear, Trump said. The shooter is dead, as is a bystander, according to the Butler County district attorney.

Several vice presidential hopefuls and senators voiced their support and shared images from the scene, while billionaire Elon Musk posted a message on X that said: “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.”

David Urban, an informal Trump adviser and lobbyist who helped to run his operation in Pennsylvania in 2016, said he expects the shooting to unify Americans behind Trump.

“Donald Trump is a fighter,” Urban said. “That photo will be iconic.”

Political Division

The gunfire at the rally speaks to the divisiveness and contentiousness of this rematch of the 2020 presidential contest between Trump and President Joe Biden, as well as a looming sense of political violence that now permeates through the political discourse.

“I think we’re all shocked,” said 22-year-old Cooper Waldron, a registered Republican and Trump supporter from East Peoria, Illinois. “You never expect something like that to happen in an election in the US.”

Half of swing state voters already said they feared violence around the election in a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll taken in May.

David McCormick, a Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, was at the rally and near Trump when he was shot. Two people sitting behind him at the rally were also shot, according to a person familiar with the matter, bringing the specter of violence into not just a presidential campaign, but a down ballot campaign as well.

Several Republican lawmakers pinned blame Saturday for the shooting on the rhetoric of their political opponents, peppering social media with fiery statements and making unsubstantiated claims that Democrats incited the violence.

Prominent Democrats, including President Biden, rallied around Trump.

“I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well,” Biden said Saturday night. “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”

Many polls show Trump with a consistent lead over Biden in both national and swing state polling. Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month was considered — by both sides — to have helped Trump’s bid.

In the coming week, Trump is slated to both announce his pick for vice president and headline the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

A huge chunk of the Trump campaign, including top advisers, were in Milwaukee at the time of shooting. It was unclear how the shooting would affect the security in Milwaukee, where thousands of Republicans are gathering for their once-every-four-years political convention.