All of America has just taken a bullet – but we WILL survive: MAUREEN CALLAHAN’s visceral reaction to the attempted assassination of Trump – and her fear that this election will only get worse

What a trauma. What an inevitability.

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is horrific. It is an attack on everything America stands for, an attack on democracy itself.

One attendee, a man said to be behind Trump, was shot in the head and died. Two other attendees were seriously wounded.

An eyewitness told NBC News that he took time off work to attend Saturday’s event in Pennsylvania. He had never been to a political rally before, he said. He thought it would be fun.

When he recounted what he had just seen, a man shot dead in front of him and a former president nearly assassinated, he said he didn’t know the details.

“Time slows down,” he said.

Time is indeed stretching. And so is this election.

A Trump supporter, Tracy, spoke for all of us.

“Why,” she asked, “is this happening in our country today?”

Americans are exhausted. This presidential election cycle has felt harder than the last, and the last. Now it feels unbearable.

Over the past few weeks we have been torn between disbelief, shame, shock and sadness.

This is a form of terror and violence that this country should have gotten rid of long ago.

We saw Trump cringe, touch his ear, see blood, and then duck and take cover before the Secret Service surrounded him.

After the gunman was reportedly shot dead, security guards began to lift Trump up. Trump could be heard saying, “Let me get my shoes,” indicating that he was being surrounded with such force that his shoes came off.

As Trump stood up, he turned his face toward the crowd, blood streaming down the right side of his face, and raised his fist in the air.

“Fight!” he shouted to the crowd. “Fight! Fight!”

Maureen Callahan says Americans are exhausted by the presidential election campaign.

It was pure Donald Trump: defiance and iconography. His statement, published a few hours later on Truth Social — while still in the hospital — was perfectly tonally accurate.

He thanked the Secret Service and police before speaking not about himself, but about the shooter’s other victims.

“Most importantly,” Trump wrote, “I want to express my condolences to the family of the person who was killed at the rally, and also to the family of another person who was seriously injured. It is unbelievable that something like this could happen in our country.”

It’s also incredible that it took President Biden nearly two hours to make a statement — not even a tweet or a one-line press release beforehand. Maybe he was taking a nap at the beach house.

When Biden spoke, cheerfully on Rehoboth Beach, it was to condemn “political violence.” His words were strikingly impersonal.

It’s a very small club, former living American presidents. You’d think, for all the personal animosity that exists, that the attempted assassination of one of them would produce words from our current president that were appropriate for the moment, not standard campaign stuff — stuff that still managed to sound nonsensical. Counterfactual.

“The idea that such political violence exists in America is unheard of,” he said.

Is it true? Sitting US presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were murdered by assassins. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan all survived assassination attempts. It is all too familiar.

“Look,” Biden continued. “There is no place in America for this kind of violence. … That’s why we have to unite this country.”

No rush, no human compassion, no moment of relaxation.

Trump supporter Tracy asked, “Why is this happening in our country today?”

The same goes for former President Barack Obama, who himself was such a big target that he reportedly wore a bulletproof suit to his 2009 inauguration.

Obama also took hours to express his condolences, or whatever they are called, to X.

“There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,” he wrote. “While we do not yet know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former President Trump was not seriously injured, and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.”

Wow. That is reportedly the best speaker in modern American politics. He could have done better.

How awful to be reprimanded by two American presidents for “uniting the country” and “renewing the pursuit of decency.” They were unable or unwilling to respond to this tragedy with the urgency it deserves, and yet they say through gritted teeth that they are glad Trump was not seriously injured.

These elections are not going to be more civilized, far from it.

But America has been through worse. We survived the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in rapid succession.

We survived 9/11, the pandemic, and—despite the left’s daily warnings—Trump’s first term.

We will get through this too. And we will be stronger for it.