What a trauma! What inevitability!
The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is a horror. It is an attack on everything America stands for, an attack on democracy itself.
One attendee, a man sitting behind Trump, was shot in the head and died. Two other attendees were seriously injured.
An eyewitness told NBC News that he had taken time off work to attend Saturday’s event in Pennsylvania. He had never attended a political rally, he said. He thought it would be fun.
Trump raises his fist while surrounded by Secret Service agents
Recounting what he had just seen – a man shot dead before his eyes and a former president nearly assassinated – he said he was unsure of the details.
“Time is dilating,” he said.
Time is indeed stretching out, and now, too, are these elections.
A Trump supporter named Tracy spoke for all of us.
“Why,” he asked, “is this happening in our country today?”
Americans are exhausted. This presidential election cycle already seemed more grueling than the one before and the one before. Now it’s unbearable.
In recent weeks we have gone from disbelief to shame, to shock and sadness.
This is a type of terror and violence that this nation should have left behind long ago.
We saw Trump wince in pain, touch his ear, see blood, and then duck and cover before the Secret Service attacked him.
After the shooter was reportedly shot dead, security officers began lifting Trump, who could be heard saying, “Let me get my shoes,” indicating he was surrounded so tightly that his shoes came off.
Once standing, Trump faced the crowd, blood smeared on the right side of his face, and raised his fist in the air.
“Fight!” he shouted to the crowd. “Fight! Fight!”
Maureen Callahan says Americans are exhausted by the presidential election cycle.
It was pure Donald Trump: defiance and iconography. His statement, published on Truth Social just hours later, while he was still in the hospital, was pitch-perfect.
He thanked the Secret Service and law enforcement before speaking not about himself, but about the shooter’s other victims.
“Most importantly,” Trump wrote, “I want to express my condolences to the family of the person who died at the rally, and also to the family of another person who was seriously injured. It is unbelievable that such an act could happen in our country.”
It’s also incredible that it took President Biden nearly two hours to make a statement, not even a tweet or a one-line press release beforehand. Maybe he was napping at the beach house.
When Biden spoke in Rehoboth Beach, it was to denounce “political violence.” His words were markedly impersonal.
This is a very small club, that of living former American presidents. You would think that, whatever personal enmity there is, an attempted assassination of one of them might result in our current president saying words appropriate to the moment, not clichéd election garbage, garbage that nevertheless manages to sound absurd. Counterfactual.
“The idea that there is political violence like this in the United States is simply unheard of,” he said.
Is it? Sitting US presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were assassinated by assassins. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan all survived assassination attempts. Actually, it’s something you’ve heard a lot about.
“Look,” Biden continued, “there is no place in America for this kind of violence… That’s why we have to bring this country together.”
No urgency, no human compassion, not a moment of relaxation.
Trump supporter Tracy asked, “Why is this happening in our country today?”
The same was true of former President Barack Obama, who was so targeted that he was reportedly outfitted with a bulletproof suit for his inauguration in 2009.
Obama also took hours to express his condolences, or what is understood by them, for X.
“There is no place for political violence in our democracy,” he wrote. “While we still don’t know exactly what happened, we should all be relieved that former President Trump was not seriously injured and use this moment to renew our commitment to civility and respect in our politics.”
Wow. He’s supposed to be the best speaker in modern American politics. He could have done better.
How galling to be lectured about “bringing the country together” and “renewing our commitment to civility” by two American presidents who were unable or unwilling to respond to this tragedy with the urgency it deserves, and through gritted teeth say they are glad Trump was not seriously hurt.
These elections are not going to be any more civilized, far from it.
But America has been through worse. We survived the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one after another.
We survived 9/11, the pandemic, and despite daily warnings from the left, Trump’s first term.
We will get through this too. And we will be stronger for it.