The Economist leader inside, carrying the same headline, was written before the second attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. But in the wake of it, the magazine’s leader looks even more prophetic and pertinent. “After election night in America, complexity will meet conspiracy — with baleful results”, was the sub-heading to the leader. It continued: “At the debate in Philadelphia, the former president was angry and aggrieved. He repeated his false and outrageous claim that the 2020 election was stolen — an assertion that nearly 70% of Republican voters say they endorse. Trump and his party are gearing up to wage the post election war a second time. Both parties argue that victory for the other side would threaten democracy. For Mr Trump personally, the stakes are even higher: if he loses, he goes to prison. If the election is not close, perhaps America might avoid another toxic transfer of power. Unfortunately for America’s increasingly beleaguered democracy, this presidential race is tighter than any since polling began.”
Time Magazine chipped in with a cover image of Trump on his golf buggy with the two-word headline, ‘In Trouble’. Inside, Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs flagged up the former president as the “loudest voice” trying to discredit the voting system and launched an ambitious nationwide campaign to support, “Democracy Defenders working to boost voter participation, reverse disenfranchisement and combat misinformation.” Several pages of analysis followed under the apt headline, “The two candidates for President of the United Sates are as different as any duo in history.”
We already know that Donald Trump has assembled a big team of lawyers primed to challenge a defeat on November 5th. While the Proud Boys, and other extreme right wing militant groups who staged that Capitol Hill insurrection inspired by Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in 2020, are in the wings, ready to try and take the law into their own hands again. In response, the Democrats are mobilising a small army of lawyers to potentially challenge a knife-edge defeat, my sources tell me. As The Economist speculated, the election could result in a replay of the 2000 Bush v Gore election and end up in the US Supreme Court, now packed with conservative judges appointed by Trump during his presidency. Given the court’s rulings on abortion and presidential immunity, Democrats’ trust in it is at a record low, with one senior Harris campaign official damning its majority as “pro-Trump politicians in robes”.
The world is watching...
By any criteria, short of Putin using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and despite the horrific conflict there and in Gaza, in media terms, this US election represents the biggest, most critical global story of all. It is why, despite all the budget cuts, UK broadcasters and newspapers, are pouring resources into covering it. For example, the BBC’s intensive coverage will include Fiona Bruce presenting a special October edition of Question Time from the States. Channel4 have screened a Matt Frei series titled ‘Trump: Should We Be Scared?’ which provided plenty of evidence why the answer should be ‘yes’. Or, as Lucy Mangan’s Guardian review headline put it: “Trump: Should We Be Scared? — no, we should be absolutely terrified.”
The Frei series chillingly featured Florida evangelical church founder Pastor Lopez and others assuring us that God sent The Donald to save America (if not the world) and, according to some, Trump actually is God or, at least, personally made by God to be his earthly messenger. These adoring evangelicals blissfully happy to overlook such ‘sins’ as the multiple marriages, being convicted of sexual abuse and habitual, provable lying on an unprecedented presidential scale. Evangelicals represent one of the most powerful voting groups in the US, with 81% backing Trump in 2016, although recent evidence shows splits in their ranks with anti-Trump movements emerging, particularly among black evangelicals alarmed by the perceived ‘racist’ dynamic to his presidency and his 2024 campaign.
In fact, a black evangelical scandal in the vital swing state of North Carolina has rocked the Trump campaign. CNN has accused close Trump ally Lt Governor Mark Robinson, a candidate for governor in November, of having been on a dark porn site calling himself a ‘black Nazi’, lauding Hitler, defending slavery and expressing vile views of women. Repeated news bulletin footage of Trump once enthusiastically endorsing Robinson as ‘Martin Luther King on steroids’ a free gift to the Harris campaign.
The Frei series also featured smart insight from Fiona Hill, the Geordie-born adviser to Presidents Bush, Obama and for a time Trump, who called the latter a “canny politician who knows how to tap into people’s grievances, appeal to their worst instincts instead of their ‘better angels’ and who”, she warned, “presided over an insurrection, polarised the political system and is an incredibly flawed candidate.” A former senior White House adviser on Russia, she also warns that a second Trump presidency would be a disaster for Ukraine and European security generally.
At Sky News, intensive coverage is frequently billed as ‘an election like no other’. Not so hyperbolic after all.
Implications for Ukraine
For sections of the UK media, not least over Ukraine, it represents a genuine dilemma. Take the Daily Mail, normally no hothouse of anti-Trump feeling, but also a staunch supporter of Ukraine, to the extent of recently urging Keir Starmer to defy President Biden’s reticence and go it alone in allowing President Zelenskyy to fire our long-range missiles into Russia.
Star columnist Boris Johnson, who popped up in Kiev the other day for a pre-memoir photo shoot showing support for Zelenskyy, has been arguing a re-elected Trump would back Ukraine despite his TV debate refusal to say whether he even hopes Ukraine wins. Former Trump ‘buddy’ Piers Morgan said something similar when appearing on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC Sunday political show (September 15th). Well, as a co-author of the book ‘Reporting the War in Ukraine’, I can assure them that’s not how Ukrainian political and media contacts see it. They are literally terrified of a Trump re-election and are praying privately for a Harris victory. A fear reinforced by JD Vance going further on a conservative radio channel and saying a Trump ‘peace deal’ would involve Ukraine ceding most of the territory Putin has seized in return for a non-future aggression pact centred on Zelenskyy formally signing away the right to ever join NATO.
Trump’s nonsensical assertion that he’ll settle the Ukraine war the moment he’s re-elected ignores the inconvenient truth that, under the US Constitution, it would be illegal for any president-elect to do that until they were inaugurated and in the White House.
At this point, a declaration of interest on my part. I once knew Donald Trump quite well personally back in his controversial New York businessman days and have long argued on air and in print his unfitness to be POTUS. That said, given the knife-edge polling in this campaign, I certainly don’t dismiss the grim prospect of America again choosing a narcissistic, lying, convicted felon and autocrat admirer who has boasted of being a dictator on “day one” if re-elected and vengefully boasts of “jailing opponents”. Certainly, I wouldn’t wager my best shirt against it happening.
Threat of violence
Inevitably, both the Republican and Democrat campaigns are anxiously watching how the second attempt to assassinate Trump impacts on the polls. Team Harris hoping, with some justification, that its less dramatic nature (sans the iconic imagery of the gunshot wound at a packed rally, the bloodied emergence from beneath a secret service scrum, fist raised and shouting, “fight, fight, fight”) this time won’t boost the former president’s poll figures and close the sizeable lead Kamala Harris has built on the fundraising front. (Latest stats show the Harris campaign fundraising four times as much as the Trump campaign — a huge blow to his ego.)
Equally inevitably, the Trump campaign, with the days fast counting down to 5th November, are busily (desperately?) weaponising the second assassination attempt on his Florida golf course for all its worth, blaming Kamala Harris, President Biden and the Democrat election machine for it. ‘FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!!’ was the all-caps slogan he repeated on his Truth Social platform the day of the foiled Florida bid. Along with ‘We will not surrender!’.
(Another sign of Trump’s desperation came when he told a 19th September antisemitism summit in Washington that American Jews effectively owed him their votes because of his pro-Israel record. Claiming, “if I don’t win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that... it’s only because of the Democrat hold or curse on you.”)
Maximising every possible online platform, Trump blamed their “highly inflammatory rhetoric for causing me to be shot at”. Appearing on his favourite Fox News channel (the only venue where he might yet reconsider ducking a second TV debate with Kamala Harris), he lashed out at his rival and President Biden over their tactic of branding him a ‘threat to democracy’.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out. It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat”, he railed.
Trump’s increasingly controversial attack dog, running mate JD Vance weighed in with the provocative interview remark, “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris”. While the omnipresent Trump ally / fundraiser Elon Musk chipped in on his X platform, tweeting — along with a raised eyebrow emoji — “No one is even trying to assassinate Biden / Kamala”, before taking it down variously claiming it was a ‘joke’ and that he had only been responding to an X follower who had posed the question, ‘Why do they want to kill Donald Trump?’. Rumour has it Musk retreated after the FBI and Secret Service contacted him. The White House fired back on behalf of Biden and Harris, accusing the world’s richest man of an “irresponsible post”, warning, “violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about.”
Worth noting here that both Vance and Musk have brazenly confessed to tactically spreading the notorious fake social media post claiming Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pet cats and dogs despite knowing it was bogus. Ditto Trump himself, both online and during his disastrous TV debate with Harris. No matter that it resulted in a flood of death threats to immigrants there and the temporary closure of schools attended by their kids.
(Trump’s ire over his TV debate drubbing by Harris even led to him making an unprecedented demand to the US Federal Communications Commission that the Disney-owned ABC channel should be stripped of its licence. The FCC promptly threw out the Trump campaign’s application.)
While one senior member of the Harris campaign privately told me: “The Musk and Vance interventions were almost an invitation to some fanatic to attack Kamala too. If that happens, they should take responsibility and even face criminal prosecution.” Team Harris, meanwhile, are delighted by the number of senior former aides to GOP presidents George W Bush and Ronald Reagan — including Bush’s VP Dick Cheney — who have announced they will vote for her rather than Trump. Their hope is that more moderate, traditional Republican voters will be influenced to follow suit.
Latest polling indicates Harris definitely on course to win the national popular vote but with the seven key ‘swing states’ that will decide the result under the US electoral college system, still too close to call and within the margins of error. Both sides are now pouring every last dollar into fighting those battlegrounds (Pennsylvania being the biggest prize) where a few thousand votes will prove decisive. Although international crises like Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon are significant election issues, both sides know domestic ones hold the key to power.
Who’s endorsing who
For Team Trump, the focus is on immigration and inflation; for Team Harris on ‘integrity’ and women’s reproductive rights. With the GOP angrily claiming the US Federal Reserve decision to lower interest rates adds up to ‘proof’ it is biased in favour of the Democrats, there were disappointing headlines for Harris when the powerful Teamsters Union surprisingly decided not to endorse her (or Trump). But she could console herself with the decision by most of America’s big unions to back her.
The Harris campaign are also counting on their big advantage on the celebrity endorsement battlefront with Beyoncé soon expected to add her voice to the spectacular voter registration boost Taylor Swift delivered among Gen-Z and Millennials with hundreds of thousands responding to her call. The Trump camp is taking solace in the fact most ring wing US media outlets are echoing his latest assault lines against Harris and President Biden.
By contrast, liberal newspapers and broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic have been at pains to point out the hollow ring to Trump’s attacks on the Biden / Harris ‘rhetoric’, given Donald Trump’s long, well-chronicled mastery of dangerous, inflammatory and often wildly dishonest abuse of opponents and critics.
Nevertheless, the Harris campaign are urgently considering whether to tone down a notch or two their own attack strategy, although branding Trump a ‘danger to democracy’ is set to stay.
In another twist, some US journalists privately complain the assassination bids are bringing pressure from bosses for a ‘false equivalence’ where blatant lies by the former president aren’t called out the way they ought to be. It also sparks recollection of the (in)famous comment by the then chairman of CBS TV ahead of Trump’s 2016 victory: “Trump may not be good for America, but is damn good for CBS”, referring to the ratings and advertising bumps he sparks. Whether that’s anywhere near as true in 2024 as 2016 (beyond Fox News) is very much open to debate. But more than a handful of newspaper journalists in the US are known to have quit staff jobs to launch their own blogs and websites to feature anti-Trump stories and opinions they say they weren’t allowed to do on their staff beats.
Still influential liberal titles like the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times will endorse Harris, Murdoch’s New York Post will join stablemate Fox News in backing Trump. However, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal could opt for Harris.
On this side of the pond, one of the most thought-provoking newspaper columns came from The Times’ Daniel Finkelstein on September 18th. Under the headline, ‘Why this election could push US to the brink’, the Conservative peer and prominent podcaster contemplates ominously, “The consequences of a disputed outcome, let alone an assassination, would be disastrous in such a febrile atmosphere.” He goes on with the stark words: “I am seriously worried that the US presidential election doesn’t end conclusively or peacefully at all... the chilling possibility one or both candidates don’t make it to election day. In a society where guns are easily available, and political tempers so hot, being a president or presidential candidate is to take your life in your hands. Sudden death has long been a feature of American politics.”
Even the Mail’s traditionally Trump-friendly firebrand columnist Richard Littlejohn flagged up the dangers on September 17th under the headline, “With both sides stoking hatred, is it any wonder lunatics with guns are trying to eliminate political leaders by the bullet not the ballot box?”
The only certainty about this historic, knife-edge election is that the fireworks won’t end on November 5th. Short of that highly unlikely landslide, the political and legal fallout will continue to rage across the political, media and legal landscape right through to the January 20th inauguration ceremony. The best hope is that somehow a deeply, divided, gun-obsessed nation won’t explode into violent protests in the streets or on Capitol Hill again.
Finally, there’s a classic opera-derived American proverb that goes, ‘It ain’t over till the fat lady sings’. Whether a far from fat lady called Kamala or a hefty dude called Donald is able to sing decisively on November 5th remains a scarily open question.
This article was written on 20th September. Inevitably, stuff will have happened since then...
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
