The FBI detained suspect Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old Hawaiian, who allegedly pointed an AK-47 at the former President while he was playing a round of golf in Florida. The Secret Service is reported to have fired shots at the suspect before he fled the scene in an SUV. Trump is reportedly unharmed.

After the first attempt on Trump's life back in July, the former President saw a significant improvement in his polling numbers. The media half-life on that assassination attempt was remarkably short given the gravity of its implications, but Joe Biden quit the race just over a week later as poll pressure and Biden's poor performance in the June debate combined to convince senior Democrats that switching horses mid-stream might be the least-worst alternative.

This time the shoe might be on the other foot. Most commentators suggest that Trump lost the recent debate against Kamala Harris, but Harris certainly didn't deliver a knockout blow. Harris appeared sharper and mostly avoided her trademark word salads, but the cut-through moment of the debate might have been Trump's "they're eating the dogs; they're eating the cats." If that's the only thing that low-engagement voters who care about animal welfare remember, it might be advantage Trump.

Market reaction to assassination attempt #2 is minimal. The DXY index is slightly lower in early trade, high-beta currencies like the AUD and NZD are marginally higher, crude oil is up smalls and Asian stock indices have mostly opened a little lower (with the exception of the ASX200). The message seems to be that financial markets have quickly become desensitized to near-misses for Presidential candidates, despite genuinely paradigm-shifting economic realignment being on the ballot in this election.

On that score, Trump added to his policy platform over the weekend by pledging to eliminate income taxes on overtime pay should he be successful in regaining the Presidency. This comes on top of a prior commitment to remove income tax on tips (a pledge that the Harris campaign has also adopted), a pledge to remove taxes on social security benefits, the planned extension of the 2017 tax cuts and a proposed cut to the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%. Trump's platform is aimed squarely at the American middle and working classes, with universal tariffs on imports the key revenue measure proposed to make up for (some) of the shortfall in the tax take, while also shielding American workers from competing with cheap imports and immigrant labor.