Trump renounces unity, blames Democrats after apparent second assassination attempt

Former President Donald Trump and his allies are fanning political flames after his intelligence thwarted what the FBI describes as what appears to be the second attempt to assassinate him in less than 10 weeks.

In a message posted Monday on multiple social media platforms, Trump accused his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden of taking “politics in our country to a whole new level of hate.” He said their rhetoric was responsible for the threats and violence against him, even though they regularly denounce political violence and did so Sunday.

Trump’s most powerful ally, billionaire Elon Musk, questioned in a tweet why “no one is even trying to assassinate” Biden and Harris – a post Musk later called a joke and deleted.

But it was clear by midday Monday that Trump and his brain trust had no intention of slowing down their fiery rhetoric, with less than two months to go until the election. In pivoting so quickly to Biden and Harris, Trump skipped over appeals for sympathy and even a perfunctory call for calm or unity.

A man suspected of an apparent attempted murder was charged Monday with federal gun crimes.

The Republican presidential candidate was golfing at his West Palm Beach course Sunday afternoon when a Secret Service agent noticed the barrel of a gun protruding from the bushes several hundred yards away, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a news conference later in the day.

The Secret Service shot a suspect, who fled and was quickly apprehended by police. Trump was forced to take shelter in the golf club for more than an hour before being transported to Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort, a source familiar with the matter said.

From Mar-a-Lago, where House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was also staying, Trump received phone calls from friends expressing relief, listened as acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe called Johnson to tell him about the incident and told golf-related jokes, according to people familiar with his activities. The scare is unlikely to interfere with his schedule or campaign plans, according to a Trump adviser who has spoken with him since Sunday’s incident.

“There won’t be a lot of noticeable changes or major changes,” the adviser said. “He’s not exhausted or shaken by this situation and, given what he’s been through, he’s relatively relaxed.”

Images of the suspect in the apparent assassination attempt near the Trump International golf course have been released by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

But as Trump narrowly avoided a death that could have been as close as the sniper bullet that hit his ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, he once again had to make a decision about his own response: whether to try to take political advantage of the threats against his life or to downplay them in order to discourage future violence. It took him less than 24 hours to choose the former, even as there are signs of division within his ranks over his approach.

Some Trump allies say the campaign squandered an opportunity to unite after the first assassination attempt. Instead, Trump has ramped up his anti-Harris rhetoric, which coincided with his loss of popularity in polls over the summer.

“Even independents were saying, ‘This can’t go on, you can’t assassinate a political candidate,’” said a former Trump adviser. “And then all of a sudden, it’s back to the clown show.”

While top advisers to his campaign focused on his safety — and that of his aides — in a message sent to staff Sunday night, his fundraising team pressed donors to give money immediately after the incident. On Monday, he repeated a claim he made during an ABC News debate last week that Biden and Harris were responsible for him being targeted.

President Joe Biden said he was grateful that former President Donald Trump was safe, but added that the Secret Service needed more help and that Congress should review its needs.

“Their rhetoric gets me shot at,” he said in an interview with Fox News Digital, “when I’m the one who’s going to save the country, and they’re the ones who are destroying it, from the inside and the outside.”

On Sunday, Harris took a very different approach.

“As we gather the facts, let me be clear: I condemn political violence. We must all do our part to ensure this incident does not lead to further violence,” she said in a statement. “I am grateful that former President Trump is safe and well.”

Trump did not criticize Musk for bringing up the assassination of the sitting president and vice president.

Law enforcement officials have shared details of a protective incident that took place while former President Donald Trump was golfing on Sunday.

For a brief moment, after he survived a shooting in July, Trump advisers told the media that he wanted to unite the country and that he would try to do so in his speech at the Republican National Convention. But he quickly changed his mind and started running in the other direction. That reversal was evident even in the corners of that speech, delivered on July 18 in Milwaukee.

“The discord and division in our society must be healed,” he said in the opening minutes of his speech. But he then accused the Democratic Party of “instrumentalizing the justice system” because he was convicted of felonies in New York and charged in federal court with crimes related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement,” he said. “In that spirit, the Democratic Party must immediately stop using the justice system as a weapon and labeling its political opponent as an enemy of democracy.”

Since then, he has regularly threatened to imprison his political opponents.

Trump’s advisers say he will act as his own spokesman in the failed assassination attempt.

“We are following his lead,” one adviser said. “We are not going to get ahead of his truth.”

So far, that truth has been an attack on her political rival, Harris, and her boss, Biden, despite their disavowal of violence as a political tool.

Throughout nearly a decade of national politics, Trump has glorified violence — at least when it wasn’t directed at him.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump wrote in a social media post during the protests that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. He suggested that the nation’s top general be executed; downplayed the fact that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked with a hammer in a horrific assault; and praised the Jan. 6 rioters who clubbed police officers, stormed the Capitol and tried to stop the counting of 2020 electoral votes by force.

It is not yet clear whether this second assassination attempt will have an impact on the outcome of the campaign. Trump was facing another candidate, Biden, at the time of the shooting in Pennsylvania.

Since Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic standard-bearer eight days after the first attempt, polls have shown Democrats are in a stronger position to win in November. But most polls show an extremely tight race in which both candidates are within the margin of error in key states.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News: