NEW YORK (AP) — Monday marks 50 days until the 2024 presidential election in a campaign that was already one of the most turbulent in American history before Donald Trump was apparently assassinated for the second time.
The possible assassination attempt on Trump came nine weeks after the former Republican president was grazed by a bullet at a rally in Pennsylvania, casting a shadow over a presidential campaign already marked by unrest, and it came as early voting begins in some states.
On Monday, President Joe Biden said the Secret Service “needs more help” and called on Congress to provide the agency with more funding.
Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said the “deeply disturbing” event came at the end of an already dramatic election year and created “a sense of uncertainty across the country.”
Brinkley said, “The year 2024 has just unfolded in a chaotic and terrifying way. It’s impossible for anyone to find their footing in their daily lives when the news is so constantly grim and absurd.”
Trump was already scheduled to spend Monday at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, according to a person familiar with Trump’s schedule. Trump is also expected to be personally briefed by Ronald Rowe, acting director of the Secret Service, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Rowe arrived in West Palm Beach on Monday morning.
On Monday night, Trump is expected to speak live about cryptocurrencies on social media site X to promote his son’s crypto platform. On Tuesday, he is expected to return to the campaign trail at a town hall meeting in Flint, Michigan. Later in the week, he will make appearances in New York, Washington and North Carolina.
Vice President Kamala Harris was scheduled to meet with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters at the 1.3 million-member group’s Washington headquarters on Monday as the Democratic presidential candidate hopes to secure the support of another union. She was scheduled to campaign in the swing state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday and speak in Washington, Michigan and Wisconsin later in the week.
Her return to the campaign trail will likely be overshadowed by questions about the gunman Secret Service agents hired at the former president’s golf course in Florida. The FBI led the investigation and tried to determine a possible motive.
Beyond the first assassination attempt on Trump, when he was grazed by a bullet at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the campaign has been marked by numerous turbulences over the past six months: Trump’s historic criminal trial and conviction, the crisis and eventual end of Democratic President Joe Biden’s campaign after his frail performance at the debate, and the fact that Harris took his place and fundamentally changed the race.
In August, Trump’s campaign announced that it had been hacked and that Iranian actors had stolen and distributed confidential internal documents. The Justice Department is preparing charges in connection with the hack.
Some of Trump’s allies on Sunday accused Democrats of Trump being a threat to American democracy and tried to tie those arguments to the arrest of a suspect on Sunday. Investigators did not comment on the suspect’s possible motives.
Trump himself has drawn repeated criticism for his rhetoric. During the debate and in the days afterward, the former president spread false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were kidnapping and eating pets. Days later, the community evacuated schools and government buildings after receiving bomb threats, adding to the sense of a particularly unstable and tense situation in America that existed even before Sunday’s stunning development.
Republican strategist David Urban, a Trump ally, said it was too early to say what impact this might have on the coming days and weeks of the campaign, but in his conversations with people close to Trump, he sensed a deep sense of shock and uncertainty.
“We’ve talked about unprecedented so many times this year,” Urban said. “I don’t know if we can even say the word anymore.”
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Associated Press writers Steve Peoples in New York and Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.
