NICE, FRANCE — After the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event, Evan Vucci’s now-famous photo of Trump — blood splattered on his face, fist in the air — circulated around the world, dominating front pages.
European leaders condemned the attack. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, sent best wishes to Trump and called the attack “a tragedy for our democracies” and wrote on X, “France shares the shock and indignation of the American people.” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union Commission, said, “Political violence has no place in a democracy.”
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, wrote on X that the assassination attempt “is a warning for everyone, regardless of political affiliation, to restore dignity and honor to politics, against all forms of hatred and violence, and for the good of our democracies.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltengerg appealed to the unity of the allies, saying, “Allies stand together to defend our freedom and values.”
But in the days after the shooting, European media painted a stark picture of America’s divisions and dysfunction, emphasizing the chasm between the nation’s ideals and the reality of how far it falls short of them. French newspaper Le Monde called political violence an “American scourge” and placed the attack in the context of patterns of political violence, threats and intimidations in the country’s history. The nation is “struggling to get hold onto traditional values in the face of modernity — family, friendship, honor, self-respect,” wrote Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph, a British newspaper.
European media also widened the lens to look at previous incidents of political violence in America. “A white metal roof on a beige hangar was added on Saturday, July 13, to the list of emblematic places of political violence in the United States,” began the story by Corine Lesnes, a San Francisco correspondent for Le Monde, which is considered center-left.
Violence like the 2017 shooting at a baseball game that left Republican Steve Scalise injured and the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords, a Democratic representative from Arizona, have culminated in the Jan. 6 riot, an event that was “unthinkable in a country that professes the highest reverence for its Founding Fathers,” the story said.
In an interview with Le Figaro, the right-leaning newspaper in France, historian Jean-Eric Branaa offered a grim conclusion: “American society is descending into extremely acute political violence.”
Europe, too, has experienced political violence recently. Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, survived an assassination attempt two months ago, and Danish premier Mette Frederiksen was hit by a man in the street in Copenhagen last month, according to Financial Times.
As American media shifted its focus to Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, and the kick-off of the Republican National Convention this week, European analysts are watching to see whether the United States can turn toward a path of unity after the Pennsylvania attack, as President Joe Biden and other leaders have urged.
Amid hope for unity, European media highlighted the unproductive conversation about gun rights in America. “Every time a massacre shakes the United States, there are calls for both parties to reach an agreement to address the problem. But in the end, nothing ever happens,” according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais. “The question now is whether Trump supporters — who tend to oppose any limits to the Second Amendment — will change their minds on gun control. The answer is: not likely.”
An editorial in Le Monde, responding to the assassination attempt, said the U.S. “is suffering from a conservative fetish for firearms” and highlighted the threat of an “equally threatening weapon: words.”
“By giving into the poison of fratricidal divisions, the U.S. is playing into the hands of its enemies and despairing its allies,” the editorial said.
Other stories dove into what the attack implies about the identity of America and its future. America has changed in how it feels about itself, wrote Sherrelle Jacobs in The Telegraph. “America, in particular, no longer believes that it is a great nation with a bright future. Instead, its optimism is putrefying into apocalypticism,” Jacobs wrote. She continued: “It is tortured by its past, despairing at its bureaucratic obesity, bewildered by its failure to offer anything of substance to civilization over the last half a century, save for the personal computer.”
If not abated, further divisions following the attack are bound to have a detrimental impact on all of Europe, analysts said.
“(If) America polarizes even more after this crime, it will be a big win for Russia,” according to an Eastern European ambassador who spoke with Foreign Policy. “Because instead of concentrating on real enemies … Americans will be concentrating on killing each other. And that’s a nightmare scenario for us.”
European analysts noted that “U.S. allies are less optimistic about Washington’s ability to handle major systemic shocks,” according to Foreign Policy. The attack has undermined the “democratic consensus” in the U.S., according to German historian Manfred Berg, interviewed by Zeit, who believes the assassination attempt essentially assured Trump’s victory in November. A recent poll by Germany’s right-leaning tabloid Bild found that 42% of Germans expect Trump to move into the White House again and only 15% believe Joe Biden will be re-elected. (Twenty-nine percent of Germans believe that neither Trump nor Biden will be re-elected and 14% did not provide any information.)
But Robert Schneider, writing for Bild — which published a headline that said “The most important thing is that Trump is alive!” — believes that America’s future relies on how Republicans and Democrats will decide to handle the assassination attempt: Will be it used to stir animosity against each other or unite the country? “Our already divided world, especially our unsettled country, cannot afford an unstable America,” Schneider wrote.