By The opinion
15 Jul 2024, 13:26 PM EDT
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday ruled out that the attack on former US President Donald Trump would have any consequences in Mexico.
The future Republican candidate for the White House was slightly injured in the ear on Saturday in an attack during a rally in Butler (Pennsylvania), where two people died, a member of the public and the attacker, Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old young man who was shot dead by security forces.
Asked at his daily briefing whether the attack would have repercussions in Mexico, López Obrador said “no”, because “fortunately, former President Trump was not assassinated”.
“This might have affected us, it would have generated a lot of uncertainty in the United States and in the world, because it is something terrifying and has a lot of impact,” he said.
Trump was carried off the stage on foot, but with traces of blood on his right ear.
The assassination attempt has brought Republicans closer to Trumpwho is considered a hero by many in his party for his quick reaction after surviving the shooting, since, as the Secret Service evacuated him, he raised his fist in victory, in an image that will go down in history.
López Obrador was one of the first leaders to condemn the attack on the tycoonwith a message on their social networks a few minutes after the news broke: “In any case, we condemn what happened to former President Donald Trump. Violence is irrational and inhumane.”
The future president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will take office on October 1, agreed with the current president and added that “Violence leads nowhere”.
López Obrador recalled the assassination of the presidential candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 1994, Luis Donaldo Colosio, considered the most serious assassination in Mexico since 1928, when the elected president Álvaro Obregón was killed.
Although Colosio was not yet head of the government, PRI candidates won elections almost automatically until 2000.
“There was a lot of sadness in the country and fear, a lot of uncertainty. The murder of a leader has an impact, of course, on the political relationship, on the public life of any country. and it also has global significance,” he explained.
And, although he acknowledged that in a democracy, “there must be political confrontation,” he ruled out the idea that polarization means violence.
“Violence (…) produces fear, distrust. “It is also very inhumane. Because in politics we can be adversaries, but not enemies,” López Obrador concluded.
The Mexican elections of June 2 were, apart from being the largest in the country’s history, the most violent, with at least 30 candidates killed and more than 200 political homicides.
With information from EFE.
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