Who wants Donald Trump dead?

So, who wants Mr. Donald Trump, the former U.S. president and front-runner for the November 5, 2024, presidential election, dead?

There are four (4) possible suspects.

The first is Iran, which recently declared it would exact revenge for the U.S.-inflicted murder of its senior military commander in Iraq, Hassan Soleimani.

Iran, which was sanctioned by the United States and Western European countries for her alleged support of terrorist organisations Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, is highly motivated to stop former President Trump from returning to office as president in 2025.

During Trump’s administration, billions of Iranian dollars were frozen in addition to other sanctions imposed on her for allegedly participating in covert activities aimed at developing and obtaining nuclear weapons.

However, under President Biden, the funds that were seized were released subject to Iran ceasing to build nuclear weapons and ceasing to finance terrorist groups globally, especially in the Middle East.

Iranians may be worried that their Torchorer-in-Chief is on course to retake the White House and carry on punishing them from where he left off in 2020, given the increasing likelihood that former President Trump will return to office in January 2025.

Experience has shown that Iran can be tenacious in its pursuit, so this is not an extreme supposition.

However, that nation has refuted any role in the Trump assassination attempt.

The second is Russia, which has been the U.S.’s fiercest adversary since the days of the Cold War till date. That nation could be held accountable for the ongoing conflict it is having with Ukraine, a former USSR territory that the U.S. is leading NATO, the North American Treaty Organisation, to arm and finance to fight on Ukraine’s behalf, a war that has claimed thousands of Russian lives. In the scenario outlined above, every prominent U.S. citizen or official becomes a potential target for murder.

China ranks third on the suspect list with the second-biggest economy in the world, after the United States, which holds the top spot. China is the closest competitor to the United States and is projected to surpass it economically in 2050.

The fact that China is waging an unofficial war against Taiwan, a territory it claims to be Chinese but which the Taiwanese reject only serves to heighten mistrust of the country.

In the manner that tension hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, a former USSR republic, escalated into a full-scale war, if the tension between China and Taiwan, an ally of the U.S., were to escalate into a war, Taiwan would be relying on the U.S. to provide her with protection.

So, targeting the likely next president of the U.S. for assassination is not implausible.

The Democratic National Convention (DNC), the political party of President Joe Biden (who is Trump’s primary opponent in the presidential contest,) is the fourth suspect.

Interestingly, this is the second time that Biden and Trump will face-off in a presidential contest in the last decade. The first was in 2019/2020, and the second will be in November 2024, (if Biden does not step down) when the winner will be elected to the White House.

When former President Trump’s supporters rejected President Biden as the presidential contest winner in 2020, they stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2020, setting off a disastrous chain of unpalatable and unsavory events.

As a result, former President Trump’s allies and advisers, including his then strategist Mr Steve Bannon and White House counsel Mr Peter Navaro, have been imprisoned, and the Democratic-controlled Congress has impeached Mr. Trump. He was only spared from being fully impeached by the Republican-controlled Senate at that time.

The former president was also hit with an extraordinary number of criminal and civil court lawsuits, some of which have been rejected or are pending decision. He has been found guilty of one of the charges and is currently awaiting sentencing.

It seems more like a supernatural intervention than human ability and aptitude that President Trump has overcome all the legal and political roadblocks erected in his route to the White House—what he has rightly labeled a witch hunt of the hue associated with third-world countries where the practice of democracy is yet to attain maturity. The fact that Mr. Trump not only survived a COVID-19 infection in 2020 but also narrowly avoided an assassin’s bullet on 13 July suggests that he has twice cheated death.

As a result of his dexterous navigation of the political path to the White House strewn with roadblocks that were intended to hurt his brand rather than help him, Mr Trump’s popularity has exploded, as shown by the most recent surveys showing him well ahead of his primary rival, President Trump and DNC in all the battleground states.

It is understandable why supporters of the man who appears to be unstoppable—Donald Trump—have come to the conclusion that his political opponents in the Democratic Party have become so desperate that they felt compelled to attempt his assassination. That is even though the man who attempted to assassinate him -Mathew Crooks is a registered Republican.

How amazing that after all their attempts to stop him from employing both legal and clandestine strategies/ tactics, Mr Trump has remained the front-runner in the race to become president on January 20, 2025.

Indeed, presidential assassinations in the United States date back to 1865. In fact, it was especially popular in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy was slain in November of 1963, to be exact. On March 30, 1981, there was also an attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life. Presidents Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in July 1881, and William McKinley in September 1901 were assassinated before the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981.

So, Donald Trump, the 45th president, and Ronald Reagan 40th president share a common destiny of escaping assassin’s bullets.

It was not surprising that the first person to accuse the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of being behind the July 13 assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump was Senator J.D. Vance, just moments after the attempt and before he was selected as the vice presidential candidate and running mate of the GOP presidential candidate.

Without equivocation or mincing words, Senator J.D Vance wrote on X formerly known as Twitter:

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.”

He made the following conclusion: “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

To be continued tomorrow.

Onyinbe, an Entrepreneur, Public Policy Analyst, wrote from Lagos.