Just two months after a gunman nearly killed Donald Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania, a second assassination attempt on the previous president on Sunday further rocked an election campaign that has already seen unprecedented twists and turns.
The political implications are still unclear, unlike the primary attempt, which sparked a flood of reactions from politicians and the business community world wide.
“My ‘controversial’ opinion on the shooting near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach today: We must wait until the facts are clear before we react,” said the GOP pollster Frank Luntz posted on X.
The most up-to-date incident occurred while Trump was playing golf together with his friend and major donor Steve Witkoff at his club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters that a Secret Service agent conducting a security check a number of holes away saw a rifle barrel with a scope protruding of a fence and opened fire on the suspect. Trump was about 300 to 500 yards from the incident.
A witness saw a person flee the scene and took a photograph of his automobile, which Bradshaw described as a black Nissan. With that information, authorities tracked the vehicle down on Interstate 95, where the Martin County Sheriff’s Office arrested him.
Martin County Sheriff William D. Snyder told reporters the suspect was “relatively calm” when he was arrested. “He didn’t show much emotion. He never asked, ‘What is this about?'”
Bradshaw said the witness was taken to Martin County and identified the suspect, later identified as Ryan Wesley Routh. An AK-47 rifle, a backpack and a Go-Pro camera were found on a fence outside Trump’s golf club.
The Secret Service said Trump was secure and the FBI said it was investigating the incident as an attempted assassination.
Trump’s Secret Service protection
Because Trump isn’t a sitting president, Bradshaw said his security detail is more limited but hinted that it’ll be further increased. Security was further increased after the Pennsylvania shooting.
“If he was, we would have had the entire golf course surrounded. But because he is not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service thinks are possible,” he explained on the press conference. “So I would imagine that the next time he comes to the golf course, there will probably be a few more people around the property. But the Secret Service did exactly what they should have done.”
There at the moment are lower than two months until Election Day, and the polls remain close, despite a turbulent election campaign. Per week after the primary assassination attempt on Trump, President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who quickly secured the support of the Democratic Party, nominated her running mate Tim Walz, and raised greater than $500 million.
Last week saw the primary and only debate between Trump and Harris, with Harris widely seen because the winner.
Markets and the campaign
Financial markets were volatile, following the wild swings of the election campaign. After Biden’s disastrous performance in the talk against Trump in June, the “Trump trade” saw the dollar and cryptocurrencies get well, while US bonds fell.
The first assassination attempt and Trump’s defiant response to it further fueled this trade. In fact, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced his support for Trump just hours after the shooting. The tech billionaire has since helped form a pro-Trump super PAC and even interviewed him on his social media platform X.
But Harris’ rise to the highest of the candidate list sparked a wave of enthusiasm amongst Democrats, who caught up with Trump within the polls, reversing the Trump trade.
There was little change in U.S. stock futures on Sunday evening. The S&P 500 was unchanged, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq were down 0.1 percent. Bitcoin fell 0.66 percent to $59,441 and Brent crude oil futures rose 0.34 percent to $71.85 a barrel.
