By Nik Dirga of RNZ
“The president has been shot!” It’s a breaking news headline many Americans haven’t heard in their lifetimes.
The last attempted assassination of a sitting or former American President was of Ronald Reagan in 1981, and Sunday’s shooting at a Donald Trump rally upended an already historically unsettled US presidential race.
For many Americans who now call New Zealand home, the chaotic presidential campaign has left them shaken.
Prior to the shooting where former President Trump was injured, the news cycle had been consumed by President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and growing concern about whether Biden, 81, should run for a second term.
Americans living in New Zealand who spoke to RNZ all described feeling deep concern over the November 5 election and what has been happening in recent weeks.
“In a word: terrified,” said Clare Adams, who moved to New Zealand in 2018.
Arthur Schenck moved to New Zealand in 1995 and writes the AmeriNZ blog from his home in Hamilton.
“Until today, I was optimistic about the 2024 election, but now I’m worried that violence could escalate, and then all bets are off,” he said.
Cameron Murray of Rotorua moved to New Zealand in 2022, a large reason being American political unrest.
“We moved to NZ in 2022 having lived through the 2020 election and January 6, precisely to get away from the chaos (and join our daughter here). We knew the 2024 race would be even more chaotic.”
The shooting at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania left Trump injured, one spectator dead and two critically hurt.
“The assassination attempt on Trump left me in disbelief,” said Maja Sagaser, who just moved to Wellington in January. “Not necessarily because I didn’t think something like it could happen, but because it’s scary and sad to see the US slowly tearing itself apart.”
Stan Johnson of Wellington said it evoked grim memories of past violence.
“I lived through the Kennedy assassinations and the attempt on Reagan’s life. Not to mention the assassination attempts on various other politicians in America over the last 60-plus years.”
“This is not how a free and democratic people retain their freedom and democracy. That is the way socialists and communists do things.”
Johnson said he was concerned about Biden’s “cognitive decline and lack of mental acuity” and thought the 25th Amendment to the Constitution – which allows a president to be removed from office if unable to perform their duties – needed to be put into play.
On the other hand, Schenck said, “Joe Biden is old, but, for me, two things outweigh that”.
“He’s been extremely effective, and he’s a decent person of good character. He had the worst debate performance ever, but I thought the sudden freak-out over his age was over the top.”
Sagaser said she was concerned about Biden’s condition.
“It’s not even a question to me whether Biden is fit to run, there have been so many public instances indicating he is not.
“I am angry with the Democratic Party; it feels like their leadership is under the belief that they can fool the American people into thinking everything is fine.”
Adams said image matters in American politics, and that hurt Biden in the June 27 debate.
Americans care about “a sense of feeling powerful and I don’t think Biden channelled that well during the debate, even if his policies may be more beneficial to society,” she said.
Murray criticised Trump for his rhetoric and its effect on politics, and what he called Trump’s own “unhinged” behaviour not being held to the same standard as recent Biden coverage.
“Trump has unleashed the political violence with his language and direct calling out people to be vilified. Now political violence is the new normal.”
The state of play with a little more than 100 days until the November election is volatile – Trump will officially receive the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, while the chatter about whether or not Biden might step down or even be ousted as the Democratic nominee continues.
“Every Kiwi we have encountered has asked us how we could have elected Trump in the first place,” Murray said. “And why Biden and Trump are the candidates again.”
But few Americans living in New Zealand see any easy answer to the violent undercurrent running through politics no matter who wins in November.
Johnson, whose family moved to New Zealand 12 years, ago, said he was not optimistic, citing a decline in public education.
“We had to finally admit that America was no longer the country we’d grown up in, no longer the country I defended while serving in the Navy. And, that many of our rights and freedoms had been lost.”
Adams said as an Asian-American woman, she saw blatant racism while living in Iowa during Trump’s 2016 campaign. She was also afraid for women’s rights and climate change issues under a possible second Trump term.
“It leaves me feeling hopeless for my future as a young-ish person.”
Murray worried that similar polarisation is happening here.
“I am afraid I see the undercurrents from US politics seeping into New Zealand.
“Because the politics of division has worked in the US for one party, I hope NZ does not pick this up as a model to follow. I want to live in a saner society and body politic.”
Adams said America needs to find a way to achieve unity.
“What we need is someone who can bring the nation together, and I don’t think that’s either party right now, especially not Trump who actively benefits from dividing us as a nation.”
Sagaser said she bemoaned the lack of options under the Republican and Democratic monopoly of the American system.
“So many of us, myself included, are very tired of repeating the push/pull of the bipartisan system every four years,” she said.
Schenck felt that most importantly, there was a need to stop demonising people who did not agree with you politically.
“I think the key is the need to see each other as people, not caricatures.
“People only hate in the third person- ‘those people’ - not in the second person.
“If they can see each other as ‘us-es’, we can learn to live together. San Francisco’s Harvey Milk - who was assassinated - taught me that.”
- RNZ
The man is now in a critical but stable condition in hospital.