It’s hard to know what to think about an act of murderous terror when you’re in the middle of it.
I witnessed one in Butler, Pennsylvania, last Saturday evening when a 20 year-old loner came extraordinarily close to assassinating Donald Trump with his father’s assault rifle.
There was a party atmosphere among the sun-baked crowd of thousands of Trump supporters as they waited for hours to see their idol. I was there to cover it and was in the middle of them, some 50 metres from his podium.
In the moment, everything was raw and confusing. Was that volley of sharp snaps really high velocity bullets flying over us? Or just firecrackers from some poor taste stunt. Unlike the detailed news reports afterwards, nobody is alongside you to explain the rapid drama in front of your eyes.
It didn’t take long for the horror of it to dawn. Secret Service agents barked at us all to leave as fast as possible, and I saw medics on a grass bank desperately working to save the life of one of the three spectators who had been shot.
Then when the pandemonium was over, I struggled to work out how to feel about it. A wave of emotions passes through you as you process it all: fear, relief, anger, sadness.
It was just the same for the Trump faithful, many of whom were hanging around dazed at the Butler show ground’s exit and with an array of different reactions.
“This was paid for by CNN and Joe Biden,” one young man wearing a red MAGA baseball cap shouted at me. “They won’t get away with it”.
But 57-year-old Debbie, who had driven 100 miles with her best friend Lisa to see their political hero, was already more reflective.
“This is a sad day for America. This just shouldn’t have happened here,” Debbie told me. “We can’t start blaming the Democrats. There’s too much hatred in this country already.”
How should all Americans react to the return of political violence across their country that continues to spiral?
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a gunman who killed six more, and then Representative Steve Scalise was hit and almost bled to death when bullets were sprayed at a Congressional baseball practice session.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was beaten with a hammer in his home when an attacker broke in looking for his wife, and the FBI foiled a plot by a militia group - calling themselves the Wolverine Watchmen - to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and bring down her state government. The most notorious of all, the US Capitol was looted on January 6, 2021 by Trump fanatics who wanted to bring down his opponent’s victory.
For months, US Government officials who monitor social media chatter and the increase in actual threats to politicians have warned civil violence will worsen still.
Politicians on both sides have without a doubt worsened the climate with ever uglier and more violent rhetoric
There is no playbook for where America is now. Emotions are running sky high and its citizens are finding it hard not to be led by them.
Do they “fight, fight, fight” as Trump shouted in defiance as he was bundled off the Butler stage (though I don’t think he meant it literally but just didn’t want voters to see him looking dishevelled and weak), or do they attempt to embrace and agree to respect their differences?
The country is at a pivotal crossroads, and even the President doesn’t know which path they’ll choose. Asked how much Saturday’s shooting might alter the election’s course, Joe Biden said candidly: “I don’t know, and you don’t know either”.
Politicians on both sides have without a doubt worsened the climate with ever uglier and more violent rhetoric. Trump has been the worst, openly predicting “a bloodbath” if he loses the election in November. But Biden is now retaliating in kind. The ageing president was forced to admit in an interview with NBC on Monday that his words to donors last week that it was “time to put Trump in the bullseye” were a mistake.
“I meant focus on him,” he explained. “Focus on what he’s doing.”
Both men have shown uncharacteristically statesmanlike restraint. Trump especially knows the electoral value of moderation at the moment
Both candidates have elevated the rhetorical stakes in this year’s election so high that the vote is not about rival policies or even a rival belief system. The survival of humanity itself is now at stake if you vote for the other guy. The attempted assassination of one of them is a logical development if they are to be taken at their word.
Both have also shown uncharacteristically statesmanlike restraint since Saturday, as they can read the national mood too. Instead they’re locked in a new duel for who can look the most responsible as they echo each other’s calls for unity.
Trump especially knows the electoral value of moderation at the moment, with one of the key demographics he wants to win over being suburban soccer moms who revile his macho sabre-rattling.
He revealed he is now rewriting his convention speech that closes the Republicans’ week-long gathering in Minnesota on Thursday night so it no longer attacks Joe Biden (it was “going to be a humdinger”, he told an interviewer almost regretfully). What Trump says during it will be an important moment in this campaign. But does a leopard change its spots? How long can Trump not be Trumpy?
I covered the first Biden vs Trump presidential race in 2020, and was struck then by how polarised the US had become between the liberal and conservative spectrums. Coming back four years later, it is worse.
Then, you could still trust the legal system. Now the judiciary is a player in the internecine fight. Elected Democrat prosecutors in New York pursued Donald Trump with hush money charges that federal authorities thought too obscure. And a judge in Florida - appointed by Trump when president - threw out his secret documents case this week to the bewilderment of the legal establishment.
Just as talking to voters used to be a lively debate. Now too many just want to rant at you about their pet conspiracy theory devoid of substantiated facts. They feel it, and that’s good enough now.
The moment of greatest danger comes on November 6, the day after polling day. Will either side respect the result, whoever wins? In a country already awash with firearms, the hard right militias will undoubtedly mobilise again if Trump loses.
If the Democrats lose, some think the firmly blue states like California or in New England would just point blank refuse to enact a new Trump administration’s edicts. If that happens, federal power has broken down.
British-born Fiona Hill, an intelligence analyst for three presidents and who served on the National Security Council, thinks the US may already be in “a cold civil war”, and is slowly beginning to break up.
“I feel we’re already in a full-blown constitutional crisis in the United States,” Hill said last month. “We’ve already seen a soft secession of the states, we’re already there.
“It’s not just about abortions and guns. Education systems are different, access to books, everything that you can think of is turned on its head in terms of a unified space that Americans are operating under.”
There is an old adage about the United States being two countries sharing the same land mass. More and more, it’s sounding like a prophecy.
