SUMMER OF DISRUPTION

It's been 56 years since America faced a season as unsettling-and as apt to change politics

- PHILIP ELLIOTT

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HAS NOW survived at least two credible assassination attempts this election year. The latest, on Sept. 15 at one of his golf clubs in Florida, was not as close as the one that bloodied him at a Butler, Pa., campaign rally on July 13. But it was nonetheless a real and immediate threat-a fully loaded assault rifle allegedly held by Ryan Wesley Routh from 400 yards in search of the leader of the Republican Party, with the potential to upend American politics and history.

It was just the latest in a series of events unsettling the nation in a summer of disruption. Two weeks before the Butler attempt on Trump's life, President Joe Biden had triggered a crisis in the Democratic Party with his halting debate performance. A week after the attack, Biden dropped his bid for a second term, teeing up Vice President Kamala Harris' extraordinarily rapid consolidation of her party behind her and resetting the competition for the Oval Office. Over the next few weeks, the world learned details of two international plots to disrupt the election-one from Iran, which had set in motion operations to hack Trump's campaign and, separately, to take him out; another from Russia seeking to undermine faith in the vote.