By Gram Slattery and Alexandra Ulmer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A day after what appeared to be the second attempt on his life in two months, Donald Trump’s campaign and allies said he would hit the trail this week as planned – and probably keep playing golf.
The Republican presidential candidate kept a relatively low profile on Monday as more details emerged about the apparent assassination attempt. Trump met with the U.S. Secret Service acting head at his Palm Beach, Florida, home, gave a media interview and referred to the incident once on Truth Social.
He claimed without evidence in an interview with Fox News that the suspected gunman was acting on Democrats’ “highly inflammatory language,” comments he followed later in a social media post with his own heated rhetoric.
“Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” Trump wrote.
In addition to fundraising appeals, his campaign emailed a statement highlighting earlier comments by Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and other Democrats that the campaign said had prompted the suspected would-be assassin.
Vice President Harris and other Democrats have cast Trump as a danger to U.S. democracy, citing his effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Harris and Biden condemned the apparent assassination attempt on Sunday, with the vice president saying on X: “Violence has no place in America.” Biden also spoke with Trump on Monday.
Trump has long used incendiary rhetoric, as well as racist and sexist language, saying on several occasions that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country” and more recently spreading the false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in an Ohio town.
Allies of the former president publicly and privately said they were frustrated that a gunman was able to get within 500 yards of Trump as he golfed on his course in West Palm Beach.
“He needs a full (Secret Service) contingent, just like he was president of the United States,” Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, a close Trump ally, told Reuters. “If not, we’re gonna have a disaster on our hands.”
There was no indication the latest apparent attempt on Trump’s life would dramatically alter his campaign movements or his strategy with seven weeks to go before the Nov. 5 election.
After the previous attempt on Trump’s life during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, his campaign briefly paused outdoor rallies, and Trump now speaks at rallies largely encased in bulletproof glass.
The former president is set to go ahead with the previously scheduled launch of a cryptocurrency business at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday night, according to a source with knowledge of his schedule.
He then plans to hold a town hall in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday, a rally in New York on Wednesday and another rally in North Carolina on Saturday, the source added. All are set to take place at indoor venues.
It was not immediately clear if Trump would keep golfing. But one close associate said the Secret Service would find it hard to keep him off the course.
“It’s his only real way of de-stressing,” that person said.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Washington and Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Bo Erickson; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Leslie Adler)
