On Saturday afternoon, a lone gunman attempted to kill Donald Trump, the former U.S. president and current Republican candidate for the upcoming presidential election in November. Trump survived, suffering just a bloodied ear, but one other person in the crowd was killed and two others injured in the attack. The 20-year-old shooter was killed by the Secret Service. The motivation for the shooting is still under investigation.
Politicians across the U.S. political spectrum—including President Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential campaign—repudiated the act of political violence. No matter the motivation of the shooter, the attack will be shoehorned into the narrative of escalating polarization amid the country’s already tense political climate ahead of the election.
Beyond the concerns about more politically motivated violence, media outlets and political analysts began searching for historical parallels to understand how this attack could affect the election campaign. Other failed assassination attempts in U.S. history—including those against former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt—may be too far in the past to explain how this one will play out in the contemporary media environment. Instead, two attacks in recent years in Latin America demonstrate contrasting potential scenarios for how the attempt on Trump’s life could affect political outcomes in an era of polarization and social media.