Nearly 48 hours after the attempted assassination of former U.S. President and current presidential hopeful Donald Trump, people in Windsor, Ont. continue to condemn the violence across the border
“There’s no place for violence in any of this,” said Windsor resident Silvio Civitarese. “It doesn’t matter what side you’re on, who you’re voting for or what you’re doing. When violence takes over, it really just leaves a really, really ugly mark.
“We leave it at: We disagree with politics, but we don’t bring violence into it,” Civitarese explained. “You can have your disagreements; you can have your political debates as long as you keep the violence out of it.”
“I think Canada has done a really, really good job of that over the years and so I think we will continue to do that no matter what.”
“Honestly, I am surprised it didn’t happen sooner,” stated Michelle Paterson-Maisonville
“I think anybody has to worry about that kind of thing, especially this day and age. Nothing surprises me anymore
“I work in retail across the street. I’m flabbergasted at the stuff that happens in my store.”
Paterson-Maisonville believes tougher laws need to be enforced in Canada before a similar scenario to Saturday’s assassination attempt unfolds
“Over there, you get in trouble, you pay for it. Over here, you get a slap on the wrist,” she sai
Others, like Linda Vezina from Windsor, said the media has a role in Saturday’s violence, encouraging more civil discours
“I think it has a lot to do with the media,” she said. “I think parsing together a different clips and painting people in a certain way has been really detrimental to the overall climate.”
Vezina told CTV News, “Hopefully this causes us all to look inward and change what we’re looking for. People are just people at the end of the day, they care about their families and trying to make it through the day.”
Meantime, while speaking on AM800’s The Morning Drive, professor of Political Science at the University of Windsor, Lydia Miljan said she believes the assassination attempt solidified the way the rest of the election will go, noting even though politics are different in Canada, there is still a lesson to be learned
“I would hope though that it would make Canadian law enforcement, who cover the security detail with both the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, much more vigilant,” Miljan said
“Anything can happen in politics and our leaders also go into crowds, they also have big rallies, so you have to be very careful.”
Miljan suggested the security detail for Trump and current president, Joe Biden, will be very heavy moving forward, believing the attack demonstrated how strong Trump i
“Even though his security detail was trying to whisk him away and cover him, he was very cognizant that he wanted to send a message to his supporters as well as to his critics, so he had his fist pumped, and he was yelling some words, I think it was ‘fight’. So that, I think, is going to be his persona, and he’s going to still have those outdoor rallies because it fits with the narrative that he is a strong, capable leader.”
However, CTV News Public Safety Analyst and former OPP Commissioner, Chris Lewis, tells CTV News Windsor that he’s unsure if there will be much impact to American or Canadian politics as a result of Saturday’s shooting
“Even with a couple of days to think about it, it’s apparent to me that it was an immense failure on the part of the Secret Service in terms of stopping an event like that,” Lewis said. “Their job is to protect the president, or in this case, the prior president and they failed to do that.”
Lewis added the U.S. Secret Service is the best in the business in terms of protecting those they are assigned. However, in this case, they dropped the ball
“In Canada, the RCMP have their playbook for protecting the Prime Minister and, in the provinces, the provincial police or the RCMP have their playbook and their standard operating procedures in order to protect Premiers. It all varies based on the actual threat.”
“The threat against the Premier is never the same as the Prime Minister, nor is the Prime Minister’s ever the same as the U.S. President’s. But, they need to learn, as the U.S. authorities just did, follow the script, follow the playbook. The what ifs that come up, they have contingency plans formed around those what ifs, and if they occur, they return to the playbook and they do what they’re supposed to do. And in this case, they did not do that.”
Lewis questioned why the Secret Service allowed Trump to stand and raise his fist while being taken away following the shooting
“Their playbook says get that person out of there. They get them down low to the ground. They rush them out, even if they have to push them, carry them or drag them. They don’t stand around, look for shoes.”
“Everybody standing up in front of a potential shooter trying to kill them, to allow the president to pump his fist and get some photo ops, that’s really sad. That end result kind of made a mockery of the whole security apparatus.”
Lewis said the security level with the Prime Minister is different than the President’
“The threats to the Prime Minister are real, they’re based on specific places and specific people largely, but the President of the United States is of a way more high security threat than the Prime Minister ever will be, so he has a lot more security apparatus around him.”
