You can already picture it. Just like the now-grainy footage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, the image of Donald Trump cupping a hand over his ear before he drops to the ground, only to rise again pumping his fist and mouthing ‘fight, fight, fight’ to the crowd will be as embedded in American folklore forever. Of course, there are many differences between these two events. JFK was a largely beloved sitting President. Trump is a divisive former President, running again for office, carrying a litany of criminal charges and even convictions. JFK died instantly. Trump suffered a minor flesh wound and was able to stand back up and incite the crowd within seconds.
Had there been Twitter in 1963, JFK wasn’t going to be able to post any updates. Indeed, the First Lady Jackie Kennedy wouldn’t have, either. Today, Trump has his own social network on which he can keep his followers up to date instantaneously—and he did. In an unusually measured and grammatically average post, he indicated that he’d been shot, felt the whizzing of the bullet and the piercing of his ear, and assured everyone he was okay. He capped it off with a signature Trump all-uppercase “GOD BLESS AMERICA!” Because that’s what American politicians have to say. It’s like saying “Amen” after a prayer. And make no mistake—Trump delivers his messages as though they were sermons, and his congregation accepts them all as though they were edicts from the Pope.
No one should be shocked that this happened. Trump himself stated in one of his sermons that it was incredible this could happen in the US. That statement alone begs the question as to whether he is mentally fit for office. The US has a deep history of violence from its very inception by revolution, through four successful presidential assassinations. That’s right—four. Kennedy and Lincoln are the best-known, but James Garfield and William McKinley met their own violent ends while in office. Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan both narrowly missed being assassinated. Countless public officials have faced violence, from Gabby Giffords being shot in the head at a rally to Paul Pelosi being mauled with a hammer in his own home. I didn’t even mention the Civil War, southern lynchings, race riots, or the now-daily mass shootings. Statistics about gun ownership in the US, and the high rate of gun-related death compared to literally the rest of the world are easy to find and quite clear, despite a pushback from the right wing to explain it all away in the name of the 2nd Amendment.
America, you have a gun problem, and you have neither the ability nor the wherewithal to stop it.
So, when an attempt is made on Trump’s life, who can honestly be surprised? The big surprise here is that he actually survived. The shot was only a few inches from his brain, and Trump supporters may not believe it, but he wouldn’t have stood up from that. There would not have been any fists pumping in the air, no rallying chants of “USA! USA!” from the masses. A man as human as all of us would have been crumpled to the floor in a pool of his own blood, just like the spectator behind him who wasn’t so lucky.
And now, the real controversy...
This shot wasn’t a tragedy nor a moment of strength. It was a warning.
I am amazed that this is only the first time Donald Trump came so close to being shot to death. To be completely honest, I’m still surprised Barack Obama is still alive—I honestly didn’t think he would survive his first term given the vitriol that was and continues to be showered on him. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton? They’re both too wishy-washy to really be assassination candidates. I mean, really. Plenty of people had good reason to dislike each of them, but were they so malignant to their opponents that someone would want to kill them? At the end of the day, you couldn’t take either Clinton or Bush too seriously. But polarizing figures draw polarizing reactions.
Yes, consider this shooting a warning of what’s to come. There are two scenarios: First, if Joe Biden stays in the race and wins a second term, that rabid Trump base will lose their collective minds, and rather than another January 6th kind of limp attempt to overthrow the results, you can expect lots of smaller incidents like this. Disgruntled Trumpers with nothing left to win or lose will make irrational decisions and given the proliferation of available guns, lash out at anyone they deem responsible for the ruining of their dream. It’s a scary possibility. Think of the Rwandan genocide. Half the population owned a machete. When the time was right, they used them to attack their neighbours, to the tune of almost a million killed in about two months. If even 0.1% of all guns currently in the US (estimated at around 394 million) are then used for retribution, you would have 394,000 potential incidents, assuming each one shot only one round. Is it so hard to believe?
Second, if Trump wins the election, expect a Republican Party hellbent on revenge. Expect pardoning to all January 6th terrorists. Expect a purging of anyone left of center from public office. Expect mass deportation. And yes, I’m saying it, expect political assassination sanctioned by the President. He’s already convinced the Supreme Court to bestow on him that power. I am expecting someone in the GOP will declare that Joe Biden had SEAL Team 6 attempt to kill him, which is somewhat ironic (let alone potentially legal).
Whatever the motives of the shooter, trying to kill Donald Trump was a stupid decision. High-ranking Republicans, only hours removed from the shooting, are already promising retaliation, proposing that the Democrats are to blame, and using it as a rallying cry. It’s disgusting. Gun violence in the US is innate to American culture. They may claim they don’t like it, but they do nothing as a nation to prevent it. As a result, we get meaningless thoughts and prayers, false sympathy, and a whole lot of stars-and-stripes rhetoric. In the coming days and weeks, we will see further evidence of Trump’s motives. He will double down in his sermons and his believers will fill the collection plate. He is a cult of personality who very nearly became a martyr.
One day, history will show us what happened on Saturday, July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania. But how it is framed remains to be seen. The footage will have deteriorated just like the Kennedy footage, and even how 9/11 clips are starting to age only a generation removed. Whether this was an aberration or a monumental shift in America’s (d)evolution remains to be seen.
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