Trump Deserves Our Sympathy But Not Our Support In November

I was on the phone with my daughter when emails started streaming through.

- Katrina vanden Heuvel

"Trump has been shot." She teared up, asking in a fearful and trembling voice: "What does this mean for our country?" What it means, I think, is that we have entered a moment when, more than ever, we need perspective, context, history and clarity about the threat of political violence in a time so charged as this.

Being the victim of a shooting is terrifying. Donald Trump and those wounded and killed deserve our sympathy and concern. We should not forget the risks that political leaders take in a society as polarised and as gunned up as this one.

The shooting at Trump's rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday - which authorities have labelled an assassination attempt on the ex-president - ended with two people critically injured and two killed: a spectator at the rally and the shooter. Trump was on his feet immediately, having suffered a wound to his ear.