One in the ear, one not even near. In the last three months, former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has been the target of two assassination attempts, while Kamala Harris and the other presidential candidates have been the subject of none.
This peculiar situation has fueled heated discourse from Republicans and encouraged a plethora of conspiracy theories, with Ohio Sen. JD Vance repeatedly highlighting the questionable one-sidedness of the recent attacks. Though Vance’s statements were immediately labeled as an attempt to instigate, the facts do not lie, it is two to zero.
“Political parties regularly use media to portray certain views but solely emphasizing these numbers is dangerous work,” Hyo Nam, history teacher, said. “People who haven’t even thought about it before will be convinced that Trump’s political opponents are vying for his life. The current way the Trump administration is only focusing on the numbers, not the circumstance, makes it incredibly easy for people to reach their own conclusions of what is actually going on.”
The circumstances of each assassination attempt seem to change the Trump administration’s stance on the current state of affairs. After the first try on his life, Trump claimed to have been given a chance by God to bring the country and world together. This optimism was short-lived, however, as immediately after the shooter incident in Trump’s Florida Golf Course, he asserted that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were inviting assassins to target him.
“Although those arguments in of themselves are completely unbased, if you think about it from Trump’s perspective it is not all that outlandish,” Seunghyun Ryu (11), American politics enthusiast, said. “He is someone who just came out of a life-threatening situation where the bullet was literally centimeters away from penetrating his skull. To see yourself get shot at not once but twice, and your presidential rival is staying safe and sound has got to affect your perception of things.”
From the way Trump is framing things, it seems almost rational to believe that this is more than just a coincidence. Three years ago, America bore witness to the adverse effects of political instigation. The attack on Capitol Hill was essentially sparked by a few opaque comments from Donald Trump himself which led to a full assault. In this light, the argument that Kamala and Biden might be attempting something of similar nature isn’t so far-fetched.
So why hasn’t the public done anything to Kamala? Judging from the information given to them, Trump and Vance are fairly confident in the results of the election and most members of the Republican party share these sentiments. On the other hand, prompted by Biden’s debate performance a couple of months ago, the Democratic party has grown weary of their candidates’ chances of winning. The disparity between the confidence of each party might possibly give some insight into the incentives behind the assassination attempts.
“If you analyze the situation from this lens, it sort of explains why the Democrats have been the ones with the guns,” David Lee (10), US history student, said. “Because Republican voters are relatively confident and complacent with the current state of things, there has just been no need for them to resort to other means; on the other hand, the Democrat voters are far more insecure. This might be the reason why Trump was shot but Kamala was not.”
Apart from the trust that Republican voters have in the results of the election, an underlying reason for the uncanny peace from the notoriously outspoken Republican party might be explained by the demographic of the Trump voter base. A pronounced portion of Republican voters are rural voters, evangelical Christians, men, senior citizens, and white voters without college degrees; most of whom harbor a deep-seated belief that women don’t belong in politics. This predisposed bias certainly affected the actions, or rather inactions, of these individuals, who simply can’t envision a female taking office.
