Young misfit pulled the trigger but the gun of political hatred has been loaded for years

THE shots that rang out over the agricultural show grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, did not come from nowhere.

- Jitendra Joshi

They came from a gun that has been primed to fire for years.

If he was given to self-reflection, Donald Trump might even be asking some difficult questions of himself about how America has reached this dismal pass. But he isn’t, of course. Instead, he emerges from the attempted assassination as a divinely ordained, not-quite martyr who survived to tell the tale and “make America great again”.

“Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” the former and would-be future president wrote on his Truth Social platform. More than his words, it is the imagery of the shooting that will be seared onto the collective memory, set to be republished and rebroadcast incessantly by his supporters and sympathetic media between now and November 5, and beyond. One in particular evoked the US marines retaking Iwo Jima in a climactic Second World War battle — the stars and stripes billowing behind a fist-pumping Mr Trump as he was hustled off the stage by his Secret Service bodyguards, blood streaming from his ear. At a stroke, he went a long way towards neutralising Democratic attacks on his historic conviction in a criminal trial and their portrayal of him as a clear and present threat to democracy.