This week, the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee after an assassination attempt on former President Trump on Saturday.
This has been a universally stressful election cycle, made only worse by an assassination attempt against former President Trump.
In May, results from the American Psychiatric Association’s annual mental health poll showed that 73% of adults are anxious about the upcoming election and 43% said they’re more anxious this year than they were last.
On Saturday, at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year old, shot at an on-stage Trump, wounding the candidate while killing one rally attendee and injuring two others.
I talked to Merrill residents, who mostly preferred to stay anonymous, about their reactions to the shooting.
This is a 41-year old Merrill mom who’s not sure who she’s going to vote for in November.
“It's scary. I mean, we've got so much going on in the world right now as it is, and I know, there's a lot of either left or right-sidedness right now. But to try to shoot anybody, it doesn't matter who it is. I mean, it's just wrong,” she said.
She says it makes her scared to go out and about for fear of a shooting.
This is the first year that her 18-year old daughter is eligible to vote, but she doesn’t think she will.
“I really feel like until somebody steps up, somebody that's new, and we stop milking these old, I'm sorry, old, senile, old men that belong in nursing homes, I really don't feel like we're going to get anywhere. Biden can barely form a sentence and Trump is just a cartoon supervillain that's just as corrupt as every politician at this point,” she said.
She said she was shocked by the assassination attempt and called it “pretty crazy”.
She added that she wished more thorough background checks for gun purchases were passed.
“Getting ARs, it's very easy to get a hold of them. And then you get these people that have a lot of mental problems. And it's just, it leads to stuff like that,” she said.
This 31-year old Merrill man said that his whole family is voting for Trump and that it’s his goal to one day see the former President in a rally.
“It made me scared. Because I'm glad I wasn't in Pennsylvania when this happened, but I'm glad that he, President Trump, didn't get hurt or anything,” he said.
Carson is a 17-year old from Merrill who won’t be able to vote in November but who would vote for Trump if he could.
He described himself as very pro-gun and said that the shooting made guns look bad, which wasn’t great.
He questioned the Secret Service’s response to the threat, and wondered how a shooting could have occurred with the amount of prep that goes behind a rally.
“I think young people are going to truly shock this upcoming election because I think there's a lot of young people that see what's going on in our country, their wallets are taking a hit and they don't like it,” said Carson.
A Marquette Law School Poll Survey in late June found that Biden and Trump are currently tied among registered voters, with Biden polling at 51% and Trump at 49%.
