Clayton Allen, Director of the Eurasia Group, responds to the assassination attempt against former President Trump, its impact on the 2024 presidential race and U.S. politics in general.
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Eurasia Group
00:07U.S. Director Clayton Allen. Clayton, thank you so much for joining me.
00:10Thank you for having me.
00:12We are less than two days out of a horrific, horrific weekend. This weekend, we saw President
00:18Trump survive an assassination attempt against him at a political rally in Pennsylvania.
00:24What is your reaction to the events and how it unfolded?
00:28Sure. I think that there are two ways to look at this. The first is from sort of a macro
00:34view. What does this mean for U.S. politics? What does this suggest about polarization
00:38and division in our country? And then there's also the more immediate question of mechanically,
00:42what does this mean for the presidential race? I think the answer from a macro sense is negative
00:47in every sense of the word. This is the symptom or a symptom of the polarization which has
00:52gripped our country over the last 10 years and a signal that that polarization is only
00:55deepening. It's only getting worse. This is the first assassination attempt against a
00:59president or a presidential candidate since 1981, a former president, I should say, since
01:041981. And that alone, I think, puts into perspective exactly how extraordinary and how negative
01:10this weekend's events really were. Mechanically, this strengthens President Trump's position
01:15in the race. His base of support is now very solid. It's hard to see how President Biden
01:19can make up lost ground against him easily. It's hard to see how President Trump's base
01:24of support can erode significantly from here, absent some other major change in the race.
01:29President Biden also is more secure. This is overshadowed calls on him to drop out from
01:33other Democrats. It means that those calls are probably going to lead to nothing. We
01:37expect that Biden does indeed stay in the race after this event.
01:41Clayton, to your point, it's really no secret that temperatures politically in this country
01:45are really at a boiling point in this election season. As you mentioned, this was the first
01:51assassination attempt of a presidential candidate since 1981. So how did this happen? How did
01:57we get here?
02:00So we got here largely because we've seen in this country each side move to its own
02:05partisan core. And we don't know the motivation of the shooter. We don't know what his intention
02:09was beyond harming President Trump. But I think it's not out of the realm of possibility
02:14to say that this was politically motivated. At a basic level, the increasing polarization
02:18in our country and the sort of omnipresent nature of politicians means that they're targets
02:23for attacks that could be motivated by any number of factors. So I think there's a multitude
02:27of reasons why this event occurred. Political polarization and the increasingly divisive
02:32way that most people in the U.S. view politicians and politics in general certainly contributed
02:37to it.
02:38I want to talk a little bit about the response. Both sides called on unity, called to tamp
02:44down temperatures. But some Republicans blamed Democrats and their call that President Trump
02:49is a threat to democracy as a type of rhetoric pointing that this is to blame. Also, the
02:55New Republic's cover earlier this month, the magazine cover showed Donald Trump as Hitler.
03:00Do you think that this type of rhetoric is to blame for the assassination attempt?
03:06I think that this is certainly indicative of the way that people can take very extreme
03:10rhetoric into account when they shape their view of politicians. I wouldn't ascribe blame
03:14to one side or the other for exacerbating extreme rhetoric. In this case, certainly
03:18one thing that we can expect is that you're likely to see Democrats skew away from a message
03:23of Trump as a threat to democracy. That's been largely nullified by the events of this
03:27week and certainly Republicans and Donald Trump have a very direct counter to that,
03:31that it was him who faced the largest risk here. He was the one who was attacked and
03:35therefore he is not a threat to democracy, or at least the threats to democracy come
03:39from multiple directions. I think that one thing that you have seen in the response to
03:44this attack is that, yes, there were bipartisan calls to unity. House Speaker Mike Johnson,
03:49President Biden, both espousing the same general message. This is a time to come together,
03:54a rejection of political violence in all forms and motivations. You also saw responses that
03:59really framed the us versus them dynamic, most notably from Senators J.D. Vance and
04:03Tim Scott, two of the frontrunners to be Trump's vice president. Those were not responses
04:07that exist in a vacuum. I think it's reasonable to say that they were at least run by or,
04:13you know, at least checked with the larger campaign apparatus. And so I think that's
04:18more indicative of the direction of travel in terms of where we're headed. People are
04:21going to be forced to their own partisan corners. This is not a time that the country is likely
04:24to come together. If anything, I think this exacerbates underlying divisions.
04:29The campaign for President Biden, as well as Democrats as a whole, has been largely
04:35Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. Is this a point, is this a talking point they
04:39continue in the wake of the shooting?
04:43I would be surprised if they continue to hammer that point in the way that they have in the
04:47past. It's been largely focused on Trump as an individual to date. I think that there
04:52will still be an element highlighting Trump's role in January 6th, his efforts to contest
04:57the results of the 2020 election, overturn them in some instances. I don't think that's
05:03going away. I think the framing of that shifts drastically and it would have to for Democrats
05:07to maintain any sort of viability in the race. You can no longer say with without any sort
05:12of criticism that Trump is the only threat to democracy. He is the individual who's trying
05:18to undo democratic process. This assassination attempt shows at a very least that there are
05:23threats to all politicians. So I would certainly expect Democrats message to change pretty
05:27substantially in the coming days.
05:29As you mentioned in the top of the conversation from the presidential debate on, there have
05:34been a steady drumbeat of calls from Republicans, independents, Democrats for President Biden
05:40to step down from this race. Since the assassination attempt, those have been largely muted. So
05:46how does this reshape the rest of the election season from now till November?
05:52I think that the calls on Biden to drop have been largely muted and I expect that dynamic
05:57to continue over the next several weeks. I doubt that we hear a tremendous amount more.
06:01It seems like if Biden can get through this week, the RNC without getting without another
06:07major gaffe, we're likely to see those calls largely drop away. I think that the way that
06:12this has impacted the race is that it's created a new issue for the Biden campaign, that they're
06:16now contending not just with President Trump and with Republicans, but also with addressing
06:20internal Democratic divisions, which threaten their base coalition.
06:27But do you think this event signals largely to the rest of the world? I mean, does it
06:31show just how deeply divided America is right now?
06:37I think that the signal this sends is a negative one. Look, the U.S. is the only large major
06:41democracy that cannot hold an election that's trusted by an overwhelming majority of its
06:45voters. No matter who wins in November, there's going to be a large contingent of Americans
06:49who view the results of this election as illegitimate. That dynamic was on full display
06:54this weekend. This exacerbates perceptions that America is increasingly riven by partisan
06:59division. This is also an opportunity for America's adversaries to take advantage of
07:02that division to try and advance their own malign aims. Russia, North Korea, others who
07:07engage in election interference, certainly look at this as an opportunity to sow additional
07:11seeds of distrust to try to pull Americans away from each other and further undermine
07:16trust in our democratic institutions and system. All said, this was a negative event, not just
07:21for America internally, but also for global perceptions of its democracy.
07:26Since this was obviously such a negative, such a horrific event, and you don't anticipate,
07:31you know, the country really unifying in a meaningful, positive way, what are you specifically
07:37looking out for next? As right now the RNC is underway, the DNC will be next month. There
07:42is an election in less than four months.
07:45Absolutely. I think the thing to watch this week is the RNC. There are some indications
07:50that Trump will pursue more of a message highlighting unity. I think that that is certainly going
07:55to feature into his addresses. However, the baseline approach that his party is taking,
08:01I think, is certainly sort of captured by the statements of J.D. Vance and Tim Scott.
08:06That's going to also be a feature in this narrative. The balance between those two narratives,
08:11I think, is what to watch during the RNC, as well as the response from other politicians.
08:15Are there protests? Are there other activities that happen alongside the RNC? Does that feed
08:19into greater protest activity around the DNC as well? Those are the things that I would
08:25watch, and I think that at a basic level, our expectation here at Eurasia Group is that
08:29political violence in this cycle, whether it's small scale, whether it's high profile,
08:34like the event of this weekend, is a risk that we would definitely highlight when our
08:38clients are asking us about what to look forward to, both this year and next.
08:42I know that President Trump is saying that he wants to show a message of unity. He said
08:47that he ripped up his past RNC speech, is now going to have one that has more of a unifying
08:52message. But when J.D. Vance tweets something like this, the central premise of the Biden
08:57campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped
09:01at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.
09:06How does the GOP square those two messages?
09:11I think it's going to be challenging, to be very blunt. I think that Trump's statement
09:15that he's ripped up his RNC speech, that he's going to pursue a statement of increasing
09:18unity, that's very emblematic of Trump's skill as a politician. He is ultimately adaptable.
09:24We've seen that time and time again from 2015 until today. Ripping up his RNC speech, whether
09:29or not that actually occurred, as a rhetorical device, is a very powerful one. It suggests
09:32that Trump is looking at this through the lens of statesmen. I don't know that he'll
09:37necessarily be able to pull that off. Certainly one of the things that we're watching is Trump's
09:41individual demeanor. His individual demeanor sets the stage, sets the tone for the rest
09:45of the party. Vance's comment, I think, is reflective of what you're going to hear from
09:49a lot of down-ballot Republicans, a lot of people who are pushing sort of the traditional
09:54Trump campaign message. And I do expect that that's going to continue to feature very heavily
09:59in the overall Republican message this week.
10:02Clayton Allen, thank you so much for your insights today. You're welcome back anytime.
10:07Thank you very much for having me.