Editor’s note: Listen to The Chronicle’s special audio report with political expert Mark Dalhouse below. Read on for a preview of Dalhouse’s comments alongside insights from professors in the Sanford School of Public Policy.
Former president Donald Trump faced a reported assassination attempt this weekend at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
In response to public discourse on how this development will impact the upcoming election and the future of American democracy, The Chronicle spoke with three experts from Duke’s public policy and political science departments to gain their insights on the matter.
At around 6:15 p.m. Saturday, multiple shots were fired from a rooftop near the outdoor rally, per a Saturday evening statement from Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the U.S. Secret Service. Trump’s right ear was reportedly grazed by a bullet, but the presumptive Republican nominee was not seriously injured.
The shooter — 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania — was quickly neutralized by Secret Service agents and was reported dead soon after the event. Crooks’s political affiliation is still unclear, and a motive for the attack has yet to be determined.
At least one bystander was killed, and two others were critically injured.
The event is currently under investigation by the Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as an assassination attempt on the former president.
“Most importantly, I want to extend my condolences to the family of the person at the rally who was killed, and also to the family of another person that was badly injured,” Trump wrote in a Saturday evening statement on his social media platform, Truth Social. “It is incredible that such an act can take place in our country.”
President Joe Biden expressed his gratitude for Trump’s well-being in a televised address soon after the shooting, and the two reportedly spoke over the phone later in the evening.
“There’s no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick,” Biden said. “… The idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this is unheard of — it’s just not appropriate. Everybody, everybody must condemn it.”
The president delivered a second address Sunday evening, where he called on the nation to “lower the temperature in our politics” and stated that “violence has never been the answer.” He was joined by American politicians and several world leaders in condemning the show of political violence.
The event marks the most serious assassination attempt of a president or presidential candidate since then-President Ronald Reagan was shot while leaving a speaking engagement in 1981.
Rising political violence
The question at the top of many Americans’ minds is whether Saturday’s shooting indicates a growing trend of political violence. Several of Duke’s political experts view this concern as well-founded.
“[There are] unprecedented levels of dehumanization and polarization taking place in American society,” said Abdullah Antepli, professor of the practice at Sanford and the new director of Polis, Duke’s Center for Politics. “Violence is an inevitable outcome.”
Pope McCorkle, professor of the practice at Sanford, views the circumstances of the assassination attempt as a “legitimate worry,” and one that “gives more grounds to the fear that these kinds of things could be repeatable.”
In particular, McCorkle pointed to the potentially troubled mental state of the gunman, his ability to access a rifle, his absence from any “law enforcement list” and his ability to “find a place to shoot” as causes for concern.
Although Antepli acknowledged the positive impact on polarization of the bipartisan outpouring of support elicited by Saturday’s shooting, he advised that such statements are not sufficient to bring forth true national unity.
“Across the aisle, from far left to far right, everybody’s speaking as they should’ve been speaking for a long time,” Antepli said. “… But unless we address the root cause of what brought us here to begin with … it won’t go away overnight.”
Mark Dalhouse, academic dean in the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and member of the Polis Steering Committee, argued that a recent spike in political violence that has exacerbated such tensions. He referenced the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021, the Congressional baseball shooting in 2017 and the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., at a supermarket in 2011 as examples.
“I think that we’ve been in a heightened culture of violent rhetoric,” Dalhouse said.
Dalhouse pointed to the “ubiquity and the availability of weapons” as a contributing factor to the increase in political violence in recent years, adding that many such instances were the result of “unstable people” being “radicalized in many ways on social media.”
Trump has long been a proponent himself of Second Amendment expansions for gun ownership. Although many have questioned whether Saturday’s shooting will change the former president’s perspective, Antepli, Dalhouse and McCorkle all believe Trump will stick to his pro-gun rights platform.
Implications for the election
The Republican Party’s platform writ large may see changes in the aftermath of the shooting as prominent conservative figures rally around their presumptive nominee at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, beginning Monday.
“This event and [Trump’s] response to it, I would imagine, would be really infused throughout this convention and used to … [confirm] why he’s such a great nominee for the party,” Dalhouse said, adding that he thinks the event will take shape as a “tribute” to Trump.
McCorkle cautioned that the Republican Party may have difficulty reconciling Trump’s recent messaging of “stand[ing] united” with his typical divisive rhetoric.
“Right now, it seems like the Republicans understand this idea that people want unity and civility, but those aren't the marks of Donald Trump,” he said. “I think there is going to be a challenge in how he presents himself.”
However, McCorkle added that Trump currently has “a real advantage” over Biden, with a “larger than life” image after surviving the assassination attempt.
Biden has been in the throes of a personal image crisis for weeks, as the fallout from his “disastrous debate” at the end of June continues to spark calls from within his own party to drop out of the race.
Although updated data has yet to be released in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, many pundits predict Trump will see a temporary spike in the polls, threatening Biden’s already fragile candidacy even further.
Yet Dalhouse and McCorkle think Saturday’s events may be the pivotal shift that rallies Democrats behind Biden once and for all.
“If you look back to President Biden’s 2020 campaign, his pitch in that campaign was that he was going to be this experienced, calm, older statesman at the helm,” Dalhouse said. “I think this … shooting attempt against Trump may give Biden the opportunity to use that strategy again.”
They also agreed that with the election just four months away and the August deadline for the Democratic Party to select a candidate fast approaching, changing the ticket so late in the race seems unlikely.
“If there was a way to reach somebody who was new and not part of the old Trump-Biden dispute, I think that could be very interesting for the Democrats,” McCorkle said. “But there seems to be very little time to be able to do that, and it's still President Biden's call on what to do.”
Nevertheless, Antepli maintained that Biden still has a responsibility to show Americans “a lot more than he already has” that he is capable of completing a second term and to assuage their “legitimate concerns” about his advanced age and mental ability.
Antepli noted that Biden’s recent attempts to assuage voters’ concerns have not been “very convincing or encouraging in any way” but have instead included “a lot of gaffes [and] a lot of mishaps.” He referenced the president’s recent mix-ups of Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump and later of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President of Russia Vladimir Putin in recent speeches as examples.
Campus response
To Antepli and Dalhouse, Saturday’s events reinvigorated the urgency to promote productive dialogue and collaboration on campus.
“I think this is a time that we each individually can put into action the values of a liberal arts education, the values of what Duke stands for,” Dalhouse said. “That is, taking the time to put these events in context, looking at it critically, [and] exercising some intellectual humility — that there are a lot of things we don't know.”
He also emphasized the importance of looking “further” and “deeper” into political sources and using social media judiciously to avoid unwittingly sharing disinformation.
Antepli agreed that the Duke community has a key role to play in dealing with the “pressing challenges that American society is struggling with,” noting that respectful dialogue may offer a solution.
“We on our campus have to take that as a moral responsibility and model and exemplify what that civil discourse would look like,” Antepli said.
Currently, the University facilitates multiple initiatives dedicated to platforming bipartisan conversations, such as Braver Angels debates, the Civil Discourse Project, Polis and the Provost’s Initiative on the Middle East.
To Antepli, the event serves as a call to “reevaluate our understanding of pluralism and diversity,” which are values he believes the University must continue to center in its allocation of resources and its hiring practices.
Antepli views a “broader political spectrum” as a key component of diversity and inclusion efforts and called on the community to do “all we can” to engage with people not represented on Duke’s campus.
Dalhouse echoed these sentiments and also encouraged students to exercise their right to vote “whichever way they choose.”
Michael Austin contributed reporting.
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Zoe Kolenovsky is a Trinity junior and news editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.