NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump claimed without evidence Monday that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' comments that he is a threat to democracy had inspired the latest apparent attempt on his life, despite his own long history of inflammatory campaign rhetoric and advocacy for jailing or prosecuting his political enemies.
With the election now just 50 days away and early ballots already being mailed out in some places, this year’s presidential campaign was among the most turbulent in American history even before Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt. Trump was safe after the incident in Florida and praised the Secret Service for protecting him but didn't shy away from blaming his opponents.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out,” Trump said in comments to Fox News Digital.
The Republican former president's statements are a sharp departure from how he reacted after an assassination attempt in July during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which a bullet grazed his ear.
Then, Trump called for national unity, saying in a social media post that “it is more important than ever that we stand United.” A few days later, though, the former president returned to sharply criticizing Democrats and relishing the political bombast.
While authorities continue to investigate the motives of both the gunman in Pennsylvania and the person arrested Sunday in Florida, Trump has made clear that he sees attempts on his life as politically motivated — and blames his rivals for them.
That's despite Trump himself drawing repeated criticism for his rhetoric. He has talked about prosecuting his political rivals and alleged without evidence that Democrats have brought the felony cases against him for political reasons.
His comments blaming Democrats' rhetoric were echoed Monday by his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and conservative activist Ralph Reed at the Georgia Faith & Freedom Victory Dinner, where Vance argued that Democrats cannot call Trump a “threat to democracy” and “a fascist” and expect that violence would not follow. Trump has also used those phrases to assail Democrats.
In a post on his social media site on Monday, Trump again claimed that he had been the target of politically motivated attacks, writing that the left “has taken politics in our Country to a whole new level of Hatred, Abuse, and Distrust.” He said “it will only get worse” and then veered into comments about immigration, even though there is no evidence the person arrested in connection with the apparent assassination attempt was an immigrant.
That follows the former president during last week's debate and in the days after it amplifying false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. The community days later evacuated schools and government buildings amid bomb threats, adding to the sense of an especially unstable and tense moment in America even before Sunday’s stunning development.
Biden, by contrast, sought to steer clear of politics. He decried the apparent assassination attempt and said Monday that America must work to stop the scourge of political violence.
“America has suffered too many times the tragedy of an assassin’s bullet,” Biden said at the start of an address to the National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia. “It solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.”
Biden in his speech added that Ronald Rowe, the acting director of the Secret Service, was in Florida “assessing what happened and determining whether any further adjustments need to be made to ensure” Trump’s safety. The president later spoke with Trump on the phone and conveyed his relief that the former president was safe, according to the White House, which described it as a cordial conversation.
Trump, in an evening appearance on X, said Biden "couldn't have been nicer" during a Monday conversation his campaign described as being about Secret Service protection.
After Trump's shooting in Pennsylvania, Biden initially called on the nation to lower the political temperature, though he, too, eventually pivoted back to criticizing Trump as a threat to the nation's founding principles.
Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said Sunday's “deeply troublesome” event coming on top of an already dramatic year with an election looming has created “a kind of uncertainty across the land.”
Brinkley said: “2024 has just unspooled in a chaotic and frightful fashion. It’s impossible for anybody to get footing in their daily lives with a news cycle that is so constantly grim and absurd.”
Trump had already been scheduled to spend Monday at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, according to a person familiar with his schedule. He was expected return to the campaign trail on Tuesday for a town hall in Flint, Michigan, and has appearances later in the week in New York, Washington and North Carolina.
Harris, meanwhile, met with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters at the 1.3 million-member group’s headquarters in Washington. She's looking to lock up yet another labor union’s endorsement, but it wasn't immediately forthcoming.
The vice president was scheduled Tuesday to campaign in swing-state Pennsylvania and planned later in the week to speak in Washington, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Their returns to the campaign trail are likely to be overshadowed by questions about the armed man engaged by Secret Service agents at the former president’s Florida golf course. The FBI was leading the investigation and working to determine any motive.
Beyond the first attempt on Trump’s life when he was grazed by a bullet at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the campaign was whipsawed over the past six months by Trump’s historic criminal trial and conviction; the crisis and eventual end of Biden’s reelection campaign after his floundering debate performance; and Harris taking his place, fundamentally shifting the race.
In August, Trump’s campaign disclosed it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. The Justice Department is preparing criminal charges in connection with the hack.
Republican strategist David Urban, a Trump ally, said it was too soon to know how Sunday's close call might affect the days and weeks ahead in the campaign, but in his conversations with those in Trump’s orbit, he was picking up a deep sense of shock and uncertainty.
“We’ve said unprecedented so many times this year," Urban said. “I don’t know if we can even say the word anymore.”
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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Ayanna Alexander in Philadelphia, Darlene Superville and Aamer Madhani in Washington, Steve Peoples in New York, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contributed to this report.