Financial Times columnist Edward Luce warns that America is "staring into the abyss" in the wake of the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Luce begins his column by calling the attempt to kill Trump as "reprehensible," but he then goes on to document Trump's own long history of engaging in violent rhetoric.
"No honest accounting of America’s fetid climate can ignore the fact that the former president himself is the country’s most influential exponent of political violence," writes Luce. "He described those who stormed Capitol Hill with knives and nooses on January 6 2021 as 'unbelievable patriots.' He mocked an attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of former Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, after one of his own supporters smashed his head with a hammer. And he encouraged extremist militias to 'stand by' shortly before the 2020 election."
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Luce then said that he can't make any predictions about how the failed assassination would affect the 2024 election but he warned that the chances of things going off the rails in the near future have increased dramatically.
"It is fair to say that an already existential election is now considerably more fraught than before," he concluded. "Violence was already implicit in much of the rhetoric. Now it is explicit. It is always tempting to point out that guns and political murder are a staple of the US republic. That is true compared with other democracies. But the conditions in 2024 are unique. A bullet almost killed the man who is vowing retribution if he is returned to the White House. A spirit of vengeance is haunting America."
