The story of the viral Trump pictures amid US media blame

The American media reworked its Sunday schedules as an assassination bid left US presidential candidate Donald Trump injured at an election rally in Pennsylvania. Trump emerged injured, his fist raised in defiance, in front of the American flag. 

An image that, as the Guardian noted, could “harden the conviction of supporters that he is a martyr, persecuted politically, legally and now physically for trying to make America great again”.

As investigators tried to find the truth behind the incident, conspiracy theories swirled, from some calling it a false flag operation by Trump supporters to some accusing president Joe Biden of a role. The word “staged” reportedly trended on X while calls for civil war flooded certain far-right groups online.

Misinformation was viral, but so were certain images of the shooting attempt, including the iconic image of Trump raising his fist, by AP photographer Evan Vucci.

In images, history and forensics

Vucci was among the pool photographers on duty during Trump’s late-day rally in Butler. Videos captured him racing toward the right side of the stage seconds after the shooting, as he believed it best to follow where the Secret Service agents were likely to escort Trump off the platform.

“They stand them up, and then he starts pumping his fists to the crowd,” Vucci told the Daily Beast. “At that point you’re just making sure that your composition is good and you’re making the images that you need to make.”

“It’s a moment in history that you have to document, right?” the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer told the outlet.

The Daily Beast also put together a list of pictures that defined the episode, from the first sign that something had happened, to pictures of the crowd, the shooter, and Trump asking for his shoes.

A picture by NYT photographer Doug Mills appeared to capture the image of a bullet streaking past Trump’s head. He was using a Sony digital camera capable of capturing images at up to 30 frames per second. He took these photos with a shutter speed of 1/8,000th of a second — extremely fast by industry standards.

Blame for the media

Such violence is not new to America, where four US presidents have been murdered. But much has changed for the American media landscape.

Reliable Sources, a newsletter by CNN’s media journalist Oliver Darcy, noted that the news media has quickly emerged among some Trump supporters as a body to assign blame. “While the Trump campaign urged its staff to ‘condemn all forms of violence’, some of the former president’s supporters assailed the press for its hard-knuckled reporting on Trump, which has sounded the alarm on what four more years under the former president would look like.”

“Immediately after the attack, top figures across the news media condemned the shooting, underscoring that violence against a political candidate is an attack on democracy itself…The reaction from the press and liberal media figures stood in stark contrast to how right-wing media personalities have responded in the aftermath of attacks on Democrats.”

“‘On a daily basis, MSNBC tells its audience that Trump is a threat to democracy, an authoritarian in waiting, and a would-be dictator if no one stops him,’ conservative radio host Erick Erickson wrote on X. ‘What did they think would happen?’”

‘Trump’s agenda can’t be opposed by violence’

Legacy media outlets in America noted that Trump’s political agenda cannot and must not be opposed by violence.

An editorial in the New York Times underlined that acts of violence have long shadowed American democracy, but they have loomed larger and darker of late. 

“Cultural and political polarization, the ubiquity of guns and the radicalizing power of the internet have all been contributing factors, as this board laid out in its editorial series ‘The Danger Within’ in 2022. This high-stakes presidential election is further straining the nation’s commitment to the peaceful resolution of political differences. Democracy requires partisans to accept that the process is more important than the results. Even before Saturday’s events, there were worrying signs that many Americans are failing that essential test. In a survey conducted last month by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, 10 percent of respondents agreed that the use of force was justified to prevent Mr Trump from becoming president, and 7 percent said the use of force was justified to return Mr Trump to the presidency.

“Mr Trump’s political agenda cannot and must not be opposed by violence. It cannot and must not be pursued through violence.”

The Washington Post believed that Trump “responded commendably to his harrowingly close encounter with a would-be assassin’s bullet in Pennsylvania on Saturday”. “While he has every right to feel angry about an apparent breakdown in security, the former president expressed gratitude for the swift reaction of his Secret Service detail. Most importantly, including during an extraordinary conversation with President Biden, he called for national unity. In the immediate aftermath of this traumatic event, Mr. Trump’s words tended to de-escalate rather than inflame — even if some of his allies and advisers regrettably indulged in the opposite impulse.”

British outlet the Guardian said the attempted assassination marks a “shocking and frightening moment”. “True incitement cannot be tolerated. Violence must be condemned – as Mr Trump himself failed to do when he joked about the brutal attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul and said it was “common sense” that rioters who stormed the Capitol chanting for the hanging of his vice-president, Mike Pence, were angry. There must also be care that extreme acts by a minority are not used to silence legitimate criticism. There is very good reason to believe that Mr Trump is a threat to American democracy; there is no justification whatsoever to the belief that he should be stopped through violence. Politicians of all stripes must be more careful than ever in their choice of language. It is up to the American public too to make this grim moment mark a turning point for the better, not a slide into something still worse.”

Meanwhile, in an analysis piece, French outlet Le Monde wondered if the assassination bid will reinforce Trump’s personality cult. “The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13, has already reinforced the cult status already held by many of his supporters. At the start of the Republican primaries, a video appeared on social media called "God made Trump." The video was shared by thousands of his fans and by Trump himself on his social media channels.”

Chinese state outlet Global Times had a piece on Chinese observations and concerns surrounding the incident.

Indian outlets noted that this was a warning to democracies across the world.

The Indian Express stated, “This moment serves a warning not just to America, but also to democracies across the world, against a zero-sum politics in which campaigning is a bloodsport, where both sides see it as a fight to finish and where the winner must take all. The shining city on the hill may always be elusive but the oldest, richest, and most powerful democracy needs to find its way back to its foundational values of respect, dialogue and civility. The rest of the world is watching — and, while doing so, it must also look within.”

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