As a startled nation confronted its violent politics, a crucial week in a remarkable presidential election was set to dawn on Monday with both President Joe Biden and former President Donald J. Trump trying to find their way back to a campaign irrevocably changed by an attempted assassination.

Biden addressed the nation on Sunday night with a plea: “We can’t allow this violence to be normalised.”

Secret Service officials defended their actions while facing accusations of negligence and a promise from congressional Republicans to investigate the failures that left Trump grazed by a bullet, a rallygoer in western Pennsylvania dead and two others gravely injured.

Law-enforcement officials were still struggling to determine the motive of the gunman, Thomas Crooks, who opened fire from a building just outside the security perimeter of the campaign rally where Trump was speaking on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.

But it’s Trump’s return to the national stage — just two days after a would-be assassin left him bloodied but defiant — that will test whether he and his followers embrace appeals for unity or, instead, use the shooting to amplify their calls for revenge and retribution.

The Republican National Convention was set to kick off in Milwaukee on Monday, with the delegates expected to officially nominate Trump for the presidency under the most extraordinary of circumstances. The convention promises to be the coronation Trump always wanted.

But it is much more. The next four days will reveal how Trump and the party he dominates respond to the assassination attempt. They will test how Americans balance the shock of political violence against the baggage that Trump still carries, including 34 felony convictions and civil liability for sexual abuse and the defamation of his victim.

And they will offer Biden something of a reprieve as his party debates off-camera whether the President should be the Democratic nominee.

New York Times News Service