Attacks on Bolsonaro and Fico offer lessons in wake of Trump shooting

Trump survived an apparent assassination attempt Saturday that saw the suspected shooter shot dead, one rally attendee killed and two others critically injured. The shooter has been identified by the FBI as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20. At the time of writing, there was no official indication of his personal motives. His assault on Trump has shocked the world and upended an already volatile, heated U.S. election cycle.

President Biden described the assassination attempt Saturday evening as “sick,” saying “there’s no place in America for this kind of violence.” He later spoke with Trump. World leaders across the political spectrum issued shocked condemnations of the attack and expressed relief that Trump was not seriously harmed. A host of Trump allies immediately blamed Democrats and anyone who suggests Trump’s ultranationalism is a danger to U.S. democracy as being somehow complicit in the attack.

In that rhetorical leap, they were joined by certain leaders elsewhere who see themselves in at least partial ideological alliance with Trump: Argentine President Javier Milei used the occasion to blast the “authoritarian agenda” of the “international left.” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, long irked by criticism from the Biden administration and human rights advocates over his quasi-autocratic consolidation of power while executing a wildly popular crackdown on crime, simply posed a one-word question on social media: “Democracy?”

But, of the foreign leaders, the reactions of current Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro may be the most significant. Only two months ago, Fico, a populist often likened to Trump, was shot and almost killed, allegedly by a septuagenarian “lone wolf” assailant who disliked Fico’s politics. The controversial Slovak leader has emerged from his convalescence all the more animated about the perfidy of his perceived ideological opponents.

And in 2018, then-Brazilian presidential candidate Bolsonaro was stabbed, also by a lone-wolf attacker, in the middle of a campaign rally. The incident drove public sympathy toward Bolsonaro, another anti-establishment, hard-line nationalist like Trump, and swept him into power.

By Sunday morning, Fico and Bolsonaro had publicly embraced Trump and denounced his opponents. “It’s a carbon copy of the script,” Fico wrote on social media, suggesting he and the former U.S. president were victims of an environment where their enemies fan public hysteria against them. “Trump’s political opponents are trying to shut him down. When they fail, they incite the public until some poor guy takes up arms.”

Bolsonaro tweeted his “solidarity” with Trump, and said he would see Trump at his inauguration — a reflection of the overwhelming confidence among right-wing observers that the incident would turn into a political boon for the former president. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo echoed the sentiment, responding to a tweet from Trump’s son Eric with the message that Trump was “already elected” and gesturing to Bolsonaro’s stabbing in 2018. “We have experience with a situation like that, we know the enemy — and you too,” Eduardo wrote.

Trump’s critics point to his own record of incendiary rhetoric; they link him to a sprawling canvas of political violence that’s marred life in the United States over the past decade. Trump’s rhetoric has echoed language in far-right conspiracy theories linked to mass shootings in El Paso and at a synagogue in Pennsylvania, and to the wider mobilization of armed far-right white supremacists. It fanned the flames of the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by his supporters.

“Trump himself often uses inflammatory language, having taken office … by describing the state of the nation as ‘American carnage,’” wrote my colleague Michael Scherer. “He has since called his political enemies ‘vermin,’ described some undocumented migrants as ‘animals’ and warned of a ‘bloodbath’ if he fails to win in November.”

Some analysts see a political precedent that may inform U.S. politics in the months to come. “All Brazilians instantly thought of the knife attack that propelled Bolsonaro to victory in 2018,” noted Thiago Krause, a Rio de Janeiro-based historian, in reaction to the assassination attempt on Trump. “This is going to give Trump a major boost and it will further radicalize his base.”

Bolsonaro and his camp are arguably more aggrieved now, out of power, than they were before they had won it. After Bolsonaro lost his reelection bid in 2022, some of his supporters carried out an insurrection attempt with parallels to Jan. 6, briefly storming federal buildings in Brasília. They were dispersed and driven out, and the aftermath has plunged the former Brazilian president and key allies into a thicket of criminal investigations and charges that may yet see him sent to prison.

Like Bolsonaro and Fico, Trump nurses a powerful persecution complex. They all cast the legal cases against them as witch hunts cooked up by an evil establishment, no matter the seriousness and substance of the allegations and the apparent independence of the judiciary in their countries.

Fico, a four-time prime minister, was earlier booted out of office in the wake of the murder of a journalist who had been investigating his associates’ ties to the Italian mafia. He came back to power on a platform stitching together a version of leftist populism with far-right nationalism. After he was almost killed, Fico’s allies said the news media and opposition were behind the incident, setting a tone some rights activists feared would chill the public discourse.

“Blaming the opposition, ideological and political opponents, the media or the nongovernmental sector starts a spiral of fear, hatred and further possible violence,” read a statement signed by representatives from Slovakia’s major civil rights groups.

Just last week, after returning to his public duties, Fico made clear his defiance. “Dear progressive liberal media and opposition, sorry to have survived, but I am back,” he posted on Facebook.