Biden remains without argument in the face of the almost martyred Trump

With an eye on the polls and some fears for the upcoming campaign schedule, Joe Biden listened yesterday in the situation room to the latest updates on the attack against Donald Trump. With his deputy, Kamala Harris, by his side at the White House, the president was briefed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and briefed by FBI Director Christopher Wray.

The president has called for security levels to be raised for at least until the presidential elections in early November, pending the investigation to clarify in detail what happened during the Republican leader's rally. But the shots fired in Pennsylvania on Saturday have already changed the campaign. And the subsequent images of Trump, wounded but ready to 'fight', make the entire Democratic staff fear that the re-election battle may already be lost.

For Biden, the next few months are likely to turn into agony: public uncertainties and amnesia, voter doubts about the 81-year-old candidate's psychophysical condition, pressure from donors to step aside, the admissions (private but immediately leaked to the press) of key figures such as Barack Obama, all this now adds up to the evidence of having to face a near martyr, if not a highlander, an immortal.

"I want to talk to you about the need to tone down our political life," Biden said addressing Americans in the hours after the attack. While his campaign had already withdrawn all campaign ads in Pennsylvania. After what happened, it will be impossible for Biden and the Democrats to insist on the confrontational line, the one that points to Trump as 'a threat to American democracy'. It no longer matters what has happened in the last four years: the assault on Capitol Hill by exaggerated Trumpians, the attempts at fraud, the constant attacks on judges by the tycoon-accused, the insults to the institutions, starting of course with President Biden, but also including the House and the Republican parliamentarians themselves.

Everything, facts included, has been erased, from the bombing, the 'brief and respectful' phone call between the two rival leaders, the phone conversation between their wives Jill and Melania. Drowned in a newfound national patriotic feeling.