David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to the president in the Obama White House, warned that Saturday’s Trump rally shooting could invigorate Republican National Convention attendees next week.
Former President Donald Trump, “assuming he is up for attending, and I assume he will be, will be greeted as a kind of martyr of this event and I think it could be angrier or could be more somber,” Axelrod said on CNN. “But it’s certainly not going to be the same.”
Axelrod, who is also a political commentator for the network, made the comment just hours after Trump was shot at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Just minutes into his rally, the former president fell to the ground before Secret Service agents rushed him off the stage to safety.
Trump later confirmed he had been shot in the ear.
“Horrendous news from PA,” Axelrod wrote on X. “In America, we settle our differences through our votes, not violence. Violence is never the answer.”
Axelrod called Saturday’s events a “bracing moment for our country” during a “bitter election.”
“Hopefully a moment for reflection where everybody kind of pulls back from the abyss so we don’t see this as a recurring event,” Axelrod said.
President Joe Biden condemned the shooting, telling the nation in an impromptu address that there is “no place in America for this kind of violence.”
“It’s sick,” Biden said. “It is one of the reasons we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”
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The president also pulled his campaign ads in the aftermath of the shooting. He spoke to Trump hours later, according to a White House pool report.
The Republican National Convention is scheduled to begin Monday in Milwaukee, where Trump is set to formally accept the party’s presidential nomination.
