Breaking news: Trump shot in apparent assassination attempt

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and responding to what is certainly a very dramatic turn of events in my country, the United States, with former President Trump at a rally appearing to have been shot, an apparent assassination attempt, and he's okay, but certainly didn't have to go that way. It looks like he was at least hurt, a minor injury, grazed, blood on his ear, got back up when the shots stopped, and again, appears to be fine. But that cannot be said for the state of American democracy.

This is a very grave turn of events in a country that is very deeply polarized, in a country where a great many Americans do not believe that their democracy is healthy or particularly functional, and where a large majority of Americans believe that the domestic political opposition is out to destroy that democracy. This is the worst sort of event that can happen in that environment, and I deeply worry that it presages much more political violence and social instability to come. This is the kind of thing that we have seen historically in lots of countries facing instability. It frequently does not end well. And the US, of course, is far more powerful; its institutions are resilient, but they have been under stress and eroding an attack for decades now.

Lots of things to say about this. Maybe the first, about the campaign itself, is that image of Trump standing up with blood on his face and injured and with his fist raised up and the Secret Service all around him, and it was he's saying fight, fight, and there's a flag above him is an iconic image. I suspect it is an image that will become very, very important for the remainder of this campaign. It makes it more likely that Trump wins. The fact that President Biden and his serious vulnerability is his age and that he's seen to not be physically robust, that he's frail, that he will, and we saw that with the debate, and everyone's talked about it for two weeks. This is the opposite of frail, and I don't know if it was adrenaline or instinct or what it was that got into Trump after someone tried to shoot him, but that response and being caught on tape is, I think, going to be a rally for his people for a long time. And I expect it to lead all the headlines on this issue as people across the world see it over the coming hours and days. So, that's the first topic.

The second is what has to happen now as a consequence. And I think it's utterly essential that everyone across the American political spectrum denounces this political violence. Everyone denounces this assassination attempt and calls for calm from their supporters going forward and that this has no place in a democracy, however damaged. Ideally, that is done in a bipartisan manner, that is done in Congress, in the House, and in the Senate. Not with individual posts, and comments, and tweets, but from the entirety of a joint session condemning it and working for peace and a peaceful transition, whatever the results of the election going forward, no matter what. That's what the country needs. I am deeply suspect that it's not going to happen. I'm deeply suspect that former President Trump, President Biden, will not be willing or able together to do that and that many of their supporters will have no such interest. But that's what the country needs. It's utterly essential in this environment.

Secondly, we should be prepared for more violence. And I would say this across the political spectrum: the United States has more gun availability and violence than any G7-advanced industrial democracy by a long margin. Political extremism and disinformation have been weaponized through the media landscape, and particularly through social media. There are large numbers of people, of course, that are spreading conspiracy theories. And there are also external actors like Russia, like Iran, like China, like North Korea, and others that are very interested in taking advantage of US division and dysfunction, and further using their resources as a megaphone to support and stoke more political violence and instability in the United States. And at a time when Americans believe that the other political side is out to destroy US democracy, then the stakes are very high. And the willingness of some to use political violence is far greater, certainly, than we've seen at any point since 1968, but perhaps at any point since the Civil War. So, that is a real concern.

I think that finally, and I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about this as we learn more, but one point I really do want to make is that democracy around the world is not in crisis right now. This is a year of many, many elections, and we've seen them in India, the world's most populous country, 1.5 billion people. We've seen it across the European Union, the largest common market. We've seen it in France, in the United Kingdom, in Mexico, rich countries, poor countries, democracies all they have had free, fair options with peaceful transitions. That is not what we are seeing right now in the United States. The US is the only major democracy in the world today that is experiencing a serious crisis. And we do ourselves no favors by normalizing the events of the past months of this election, and the events that we've just witnessed in the past moments in the United States.

This is going to require people to recognize that US political institutions are in danger, and that they require our protection together as citizens to uphold the values that we believe in. If further devolution into blamesmanship, into polarization, into the weaponization of politics, is the way you lose your democracy. And those stakes are very real, certainly much more real than at any point in my lifetime.

So that's where we are right now. I hope everyone is going to continue to follow this and engage. It's a really important issue, and I'll do my best to share my thoughts as honestly as I know how. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.