THE TRUMP SHOOTING
Letter from America | Gunshots and the sound of chickens coming home to roost
The lingua franca of Maga Republicans is violence, threats and the glorification of guns. And the consequences were there for all to see on a warm summer evening in rural Pennsylvania, where a young Republican crept onto a roof with one of the gun lobby's most beloved rifles to shoot Donald Trump. ANNELIESE BURGESS reports from the US.
THE TRUMP SHOOTING
Letter from America | Gunshots and the sound of chickens coming home to roost
The lingua franca of Maga Republicans is violence, threats and the glorification of guns. And the consequences were there for all to see on a warm summer evening in rural Pennsylvania, where a young Republican crept onto a roof with one of the gun lobby's most beloved rifles to shoot Donald Trump. ANNELIESE BURGESS reports from the US.
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SOME events remain etched in memory — moments of such historical and political significance that decades later you remember exactly where you were, what you felt, even what the weather was like.
February 2, 1990. It was a shimmering hot Karoo day. We were on a garage forecourt in Beaufort West. FW de Klerk's voice floated from the car radio. He announced that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison and the ANC would be unbanned. It felt as if reality was temporarily suspended in a freeze frame … then released into the whooping joy of people shouting and screaming, fists in the air.
September 11, 2021. It was cloyingly humid in Lima, Peru. I was ordering coffee at the airport when the second plane ploughed into the already-smouldering Twin Towers in New York. I watched it happen on the television screen behind the counter. I will always carry that skin-crawling, mind-emptying feeling of utter disbelief and the visceral realisation that something deep and dark had shifted in the world. ..
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Anneliese Burgess
JournalistAnneliese Burgess is a former co-editor of Vrye Weekblad. She was awarded the ATKV-Mediaveertjie for investigative journalism in 2023.