OPINION - This deadly melodrama has given Donald Trump hero status

The memes started almost immediately, a plague of hastily photoshopped images turning the assassination attempt into satire before the enormity had time to properly land (some even conflating last night’s conflict in Berlin). They were clever but they weren’t funny. In a flash, this Presidential campaign suddenly turned into a deadly melodrama, starring a beleaguered nonagenarian in one corner and the victim of an assassination attempt in the other. Donald Trump, who will have had an immediate jolt of tabloid mortality, this time at the hand of an assassin rather than the passing of time, is now an even more entrenched figure of 21st century politics.