So, who wants Mr. Donald Trump, the former US 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 US-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 organizations 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 US'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 US 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 US 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 US, were to escalate into a war, Taiwan would be relying on the US to provide her with protection.
So, targeting the likely next president of the US 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,”

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

Several other Republicans have echoed similar comments in public, notwithstanding the victim of the shooting. Mr Trump has been gracious in preaching togetherness and rejecting violence, just as his opponent, President Biden, has strongly opposed political violence while conceding that his bulls-eye statement about Trump was an exaggerated phrase that he should not have made.

The discussion of whether 81-year-old President Joe Biden had the capacity for a second term took on a life of its own following the scathing debate on June 27 between the 45th President of the United States of America, USA, Mr. Donald Trump, who President Biden succeeded in 2020 and is determined to reclaim the mandate that he lost to the incumbent about three and a half years ago. This is because the outgoing president was always correcting himself when he lost his line of thought during the debate.

But, unlike the 45th President of the United States, Mr. Trump, who is set to return to the White House as the 47th President in January, he is not bragging about his landslide victory over the 46th and incumbent President, Mr. Biden, in the first of their scheduled series of debates (another one is scheduled for September) before the November 5 presidential election. Instead, the typically no-holds-bared former president Trump let it blossom and become a hot-button issue about President Biden's flaws, particularly his age-related issues.

There is a consensus of opinion among the democrats, republicans, and indeed all Americans as well as television viewers around the world, that the 46th US president, Joe Biden, gave a dismal performance in the debate. As he struggled to put his thoughts together, some critics claimed he unintentionally revealed to the audience that aging has taken a toll on him. This was so obvious as he was muttering gibberish to the dismay, indignation, and discomfort of both his fellow Democrats and his opponents in the Republican Party, as well as politically neutral Americans.
It is no surprise that about 30 congressmen/ women have been calling for his stepping aside from the contest.
Somehow , it is reminiscent of the Watergate Scandal that resulted in the resignation Richard Nixon as president of the U
The awkward memory loss reminds politics watchers of the equally aged and former Senate majority leader (now minority leader), Mitch McConnell, who recently lost his train of thought in the middle of a speech, humiliating himself and other politicians when he practically went blank in the course of given a speech. People would probably prefer not to take a chance on witnessing President Biden's aging health deteriorate to the extent of McDonnell's.

After the debate, even President Biden's most ardent supporters began to question his ability to govern the US for an additional four years. As a result, a wave of Americans is currently demanding that President Biden give up on his goal of running for reelection at the age of 81.

The main arguments made against President Biden's reelection candidature are that his mental capacity is being questioned and that his faculties are purportedly in poor shape, as seen by the poor performance and result of the CNN-organised debate.

One of former President Trump’s staunchest opponents and a former White House staffer during Trump’s tenure, Alyssa Farah Griffin during the debate twitted“viewers of all political stripes and the consensus is Biden needs to be replaced,” and the debate is “worse than I believe most people imagined.”

Longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz wrote on X that his focus group of undecided voters is “surprised and concerned about Biden’s voice,” adding “This doesn't bode well for questions about his health.”

CNN Chief National Correspondent, John King said: “Right now as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party,” adding that “It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, and it involves fundraisers. And they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal . . . some of those conversations include “‘should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside?’”

The preceding harsh conclusions are only a handful of the criticisms that dominated media headlines during and soon following the June 27 discussion.

Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House of Representatives with significant influence in the DNC, reportedly recently spoke privately but bluntly to President Trump, telling him that polls show he cannot win the presidential race against GOP candidate Mr. Trump and that if President Biden remained in the race, he would destroy Democrats' chances of regaining control of the House of Representatives.

Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Adam Shiff, both firm supporters of President Biden, have allegedly joined the rising chorus of Democratic party leaders asking that Biden abandon his re-election bid.
It is a plea and demand that the besieged President Biden has resisted thus far, reminding his opponents that his potential replacement is not performing well in polls as well.

To make matters worse, the president has just succumbed to the COVID-19 virus and he is self-isolating instead of campaigning to save what is left of political life which Mr. Trump is about to bury.
Could that be a final sign, perhaps from divine forces or the so-called hand of God, to listen to the voice of the people, which is thought to be God's voice? (vox-populi-vox-Dei)

The truth is that the Democratic National Convention, or DNC, is in no less of a risky situation than when they insist that Joe Biden can not continue to be their presidential candidate and force him to withdraw, enabling Vice President Kamala Harris to run against the highly popular Republican nominee, Donald Trump, who is currently leading both Biden and Harris in the polls.
Remarkably, the presidential contest is just over 100 days away and the reality check is that opinion polls show that neither of the DNC candidates has an approval rating above 40%.
As of February 12, President Biden's rating was 38.9%, while Vice President Harris's rating was 37.5% as per the average of surveys conducted by FiveThirtyEight, a company that uses data and facts to enhance public awareness.

Two (2) years ago, I authored an article titled "The Donald Trump that Africans Do Not Know". That was after spending about a week getting to know him at his Palm Beach golf club and home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. In the story, I made the following observations:

“The first thing that springs forth from the mind of some Africans as soon as the 45th president of the United States of America, USA, Donald J Trump is mentioned is the impression that he does not like Africans, which is so untrue. And that wrong notion of President Trump disliking Africans stems from the fake news planted by his political opponents in the media and attributed to him such as Africa is a shit hole country.

Although the statement is flawed in a fundamental way, most people who believe and therefore are not enamored by President Trump have not bothered to critically identify and examine the flaw. That is the reason emotions seem to have clouded their judgment and why they have swallowed the falsehood hook line-and-sinker.

As we all know, Africa is a continent of 54 countries and not just one country.
So how could President Trump have made the comment attributed to him by his traducers: “Africa is a shit hole country”.

l then further made the following clarifications:

“Since most Africans failed to critically scrutinize the comment because they were eager to believe all the vile things that the so-called Never Trumps had to say, the flaw or illogicality of referring to Africa as a shit hole country, whereas it is indeed a continent, has unfortunately been lost on some of them.

“Those who are hell-bent on generating friction between Africans and the 45th president of the US had done a ‘good’ job as most people of black race have remained trapped in that mind-bending spell which l intend to dispel with this intervention.

“Hopefully, by debunking the myths about how Mr. Trump feels about Africans and what he had done to elevate Black Americans and those residing in the continent during his tenure as president of the US, there would be a rethinking and resetting of Africa/Trump relationship that would position the continent to benefit more from Mr. Trump’s presidency of the US, if he returns to the White House as he plans to in 2024.

“Not only because Nigeria has the largest population of black people on earth or by its being the biggest economy in Africa by GDP, but based on my personal experience as a Nigerian who has met President Trump one-on-one, I would like to use Nigeria as a reference point for assessing Trump-Africa relationship which is currently foggy owing to calculated misinformation.”

As if to confirm my favorable opinion of President Trump and inspire fellow Africans and Black Americans to feel the same way, surveys conducted recently have shown that, between 2016 and 2020, when President Trump was in office, the jobless rate for Black Americans fell dramatically.

The information supported my previous position that, if elected president, he would not emasculate Black people but rather provide them greater chances to realize the mythical American dream.
And it would seem that, two years ago, I was being prescient when I projected that he would win the 2024 presidential election, which he appears to be on course to do and become the 47th president in a little one hundred (100) days.

Naturally, not everyone shared my positive opinion of Mr. Trump, and they retaliated with criticism of my findings, which prompted me to write a follow-up article titled "The Donald Trump Magnus Onyibe Does Not Know," using their criticisms as the main talking point because the title was not originally mine but was instead created by a critic who forced me to present the following arguments:

“Perhaps, because a stereotypical opinion had long been formed about the 45th President of the US following several years of unmitigated public relations faux pax on the part of Mr Trump who never bothers to correct some misrepresentation of facts about him, my presentation of the persona of the former president of the US which is inconsistent with the mindset already shaped and propagated by a session of the Western media about Mr Trump generated a mixed bag of vile and vicious attacks as well as enlightening and encouraging comments. The anti-Trump sentiments expressed against the article and my further comments are the subject of this follow-up opinion piece.

“So basically, the purpose or raison detre for this further intervention is to shed more light on the areas of contention via the reproduction of the points of view of those that vehemently disagree with me on the need to engage with the 45th president of the US who is poised to be the 47th by contesting for the office next year when the incumbent president, Joe Biden’s first tenure would be over.

“As earlier stated, one particular critic made a case that l do not know Mr. Trump well enough to warrant my trying to market him to blacks in the US and Africans on the continent, simply because they have already formed the opinion that Mr. Trump is a racist and anti-Africa.”

It is my sincere hope that by now the doubters of former president Trump's divine mission to lead the United States and, in fact, the world, whom the evangelical community in the US saw in 2016, and who threw their weight behind him to win the presidency that year before he lost it in 2020 to president Biden, have been thoroughly weaned of their negative bias.
The fact that Mr. Trump twice cheated death—once by surviving a deadly COVID-19 infection during the pandemic that killed one million Americans and a second time by eluding an assassin's bullet during a campaign stomp in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
With President Biden now struck down by Covid-19 infection of which we wish him a speedy recovery, it is incredible that covid-19 that played a role in his ascendancy to the presidency of the US in 2020 is once more playing a critical role in his political future if it compels him to step down from seeking reelection.
For the time being, except if an apocalypse happens, former President Donald J. Trump appears to be on track to return to the White House after beating President Biden or replacement at the polls on November 5, all things being equal.


Magnus Onyibe, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst, author, democracy advocate, development strategist, an alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA, and a former commissioner in Delta state government, sent this piece from Lagos, Nigeria.
To continue with this conversation and more, please visit www.magnum.ng