The memes started almost immediately, a plague of hastily photoshopped images turning the assassination attempt into satire before the enormity had time to properly land (some even conflating last night’s conflict in Berlin). They were clever but they weren’t funny. In a flash, this Presidential campaign suddenly turned into a deadly melodrama, starring a beleaguered nonagenarian in one corner and the victim of an assassination attempt in the other. Donald Trump, who will have had an immediate jolt of tabloid mortality, this time at the hand of an assassin rather than the passing of time, is now an even more entrenched figure of 21st century politics.
The terrible thing is, it could have so easily happened before and could easily happen again. When JFK was shot in Dallas in 1963, America was a very different country, not subject to the vicious culture wars of 2024. The country also wasn’t harbouring the gun culture which now dominates the news cycle on a predictably regular basis.
