What are the political implications of this second foiled plot to kill Donald Trump?

After Donald Trump’s brush with death at the hand of a would-be assassin in Pennsylvania in July he picked JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate, at least in part to reduce the likelihood that he’d be killed by an assassin another time, according to contemporaneous reporting by the New York Times.

The idea being if Trump was successfully assassinated, he’d be succeeded be someone even more Trump-like, younger, more articulate and ideologically “dangerous’’ to the Democrats than Trump himself. A moderate VP selection would embolden potential killers to neutralise Trump’s alleged threat to the establishment.

Well, that strategy doesn’t appear to have worked after the extraordinary second attempt on Trump’s life within his private golf course near Mar-A-Lago, Florida on Sunday (Monday AEST).

The suspect Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old registered Democrat who was obsessed with Ukraine based on his social media profiles, managed to station himself with a rifle one hole ahead of the former president as the Republican leader was playing golf with his friends.

The former president’s Secret Service managed to spot him in time, firing gun shots at Routh before apprehending him before any harm was caused to Trump or his entourage.

What are the political implications?

Interestingly, political betting markets didn’t move a jot in the hours after the attempted murder; Kamala Harris remains the slight favourite with a 51 per cent chance of winning compared with Trump’s 48 per cent, according to the bookies tracked by RealClear Politics.

The conventional wisdom has been that assassination attempts help political candidates by encouraging their supporters to vote. But what if that effect was offset by the macabre possibility that Trump could be killed before November 5.

On balance, though, this is probably unwelcome news for Democrats politically. Social media exploded after the incident with accusations Democrat rhetoric about the former president’s alleged extreme danger to the US was encouraging critics to seek to kill him.

For a short time after Thomas Crooks attempted to kill Trump at Butler, Pennsylvania rally in July some Democrats tempered their rhetoric about Trump, but not for long. The Democrat party convention in Chicago made clear in stark terms the former president was the greatest danger to US governance in the country’s history.

Vice President Harris, who has routinely cast Trump as an existential threat to US democracy who would be a dictator, said in a public statement after the attempted attack that she was “glad” Trump was safe. Are those two positions congruent? Some might think she couldn’t believe both at once.

The second murder attempt will also fuel conspiracy theories among Republicans about supposed orchestrated attempts by remove Trump from the race, one that he has a better chance of winning according to polls than in both 2016 and 2020, when, as it turned out, polls had significantly understated the Republican’s support.

Questions are already being asked about how Routh knew about Trump’s whereabouts, given the Republican candidate doesn’t have a public schedule, and was on his own property.

The man who was allegedly preparing to try and assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf course set up a GoPro camera to film himself, law enforcement officials have revealed. He has been identified as 58-year-old Ryan Routh from Hawaii.

For all his bravado after the event, the 78-year-old Trump himself must fear for his life in coming months. Where there is a will there’s a way, and the former president has insisted on doing outdoor rallies despite advice not to.

He does not have the same level of security as the president or vice president. For instance, if Harris had been paying golf the entire golf course would have been secured with hundreds of secret service agents. Trump has a handful of security around him at all times.

The second attempt on Trump’s life within nine weeks, breaking the history books, points to the profound hatred for the former president among a small segment of US society. For all the forecasts the July attempt on his life would secure Trump’s victory in November, coverage of the assassination dropped to almost zero weeks later. It’s probable this attempt will be almost forgotten in a fortnight too.