• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 15, 2024

Political actions can shape a nation, but none of late seemed to have made as much of an impact across the advertising industry as the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump this past weekend.

The changes mostly affected social-media platforms, but also prompted President Biden to halt his campaign until Tuesday as he called for unity across political parties. The event seemed bigger than politics. 

The assassination attempt on Trump at his Pennsylvania rally on Saturday that left one spectator and shooter dead led the Biden campaign to remove all television ads and pause outbound communications.

ABC News reported obtaining a campaign memo sent to staff minutes after the shooting asking them to refrain from issuing any comments on social media or in public.

The pause came at the worst time for the Biden campaign, the start of the Republican National Convention on Monday, preventing Democrats from counter-messaging Republicans during the convention.

The attempt also seemed to have prompted Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, to endorse Trump and make a “sizeable” contribution to the group working to elect him.

Elon Musk endorsed Trump minutes after the former president was ushered offstage by Secret Service agents at the rally after a bullet grazed his right ear.

"I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery," Musk wrote on X. He also shared a video of Trump getting to his feet after the incident with a bloodied ear and pumping his fist to the crowd.

Musk had acknowledged that he voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the three previous presidential cycles.

In May, The Wall Street Journal reported Trump and Musk discussed a possible advisory role for the owner of X and Tesla leader if the presumptive Republican nominee reclaim the White House.

And while the attempted assassination did not exactly prompt changes at Meta -- because the update to the January 30, 2023 occurred on a Friday, one day prior -- the timing couldn't have been more fortuitous.

Any remaining heightened suspension penalties linked to Trump's repeated offenses will be removed after his nomination as the Republican Party's presidential candidate at the party's national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin next week, according to Meta.

“Today we are making a change to the updated protocol we announced in January 2023,” Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, wrote in a blog post. “To ensure people can hear from political candidates on our platforms, we will review accounts subject to this protocol on a periodic basis to determine whether heightened suspension penalties for Community Standards violations remain appropriate.  We will make this determination by weighing our responsibility, as outlined by the Oversight Board, to ‘allow political expression’ against our responsibility ‘to avoid serious risks to other human rights.’”

A call for unity one day prior to the attempted assassination makes this blog post more significant. Clegg wrote it while considering the upcoming political conventions, but a day prior.

“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” he wrote. “As a result, former President Trump, as the nominee of the Republican Party, will no longer be subject to the heightened suspension penalties. In reaching this conclusion, we also considered that these penalties were a response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances, and have not had to be deployed.”