Assassination nation

The 2024 presidential contest turned uglier than anyone imagined on Saturday when former President Donald Trump survived what appeared to be an attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Once ubiquitous in American politics, political violence has generally receded into the background. The domestic terrorist attacks and assassinations that plagued the country in the ’60s and ’70s has given way to incendiary rhetoric and verbal abuse. 

But as the temperature has gone up, the violent tendencies boiled over when officials say Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed onto a rooftop hundreds of feet away from a stage and opened fire on Trump. The shooter didn’t kill his target, nicking the former president’s ear and sending him to the ground under a pile of Secret Service bodies. But at least one person in the crowd was killed, and two others were critically injured.