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Let me share some reactions to Saturday’s surreal and horrifying attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The first is that so much about Trump and the whole world he has brought into being is bombast and fakery. So much about Trump’s world is carried over from the world of professional wrestling, the bombast and taunts, histrionic and willfully over-the-top presentation, the play-acting. Friends become enemies and then friends again. There is high-tension falling out and then making back up. And at it’s core the whole thing is fake. It’s all one big reality show.
But this was not fake. This was as real and grave as it gets. A deranged kid — it really seems to me this guy may not have had any recognizable politics, though we might find that he did — came within an inch of assassinating Trump on live TV. Beyond the personal tragedy and the grave wound to our whole political system, it is difficult and terrifying to imagine what that act would have unleashed. And by the merest luck it didn’t happen.
A TPM reader whose email I’m going to try to publish later said that he thought it was wrong to even think of this as political violence, at least in the conventional sense. He sees it as more like a school shooting or mass shooting where you have an isolated teen or young man, filled with rage and love for guns, who kills a bunch of people for no clear reason than to end his life with an overwhelming act of aggression, power and notoriety. A sort of self-sacrifice to the gods of destruction and impunity. Of course, when you try to assassinate a presidential candidate and former president that is absolutely as political as it gets. But I think this reader is onto something. My hunch is that this is a genetic branch of that degenerate tree, despite acting at the center of the political maelstrom in which we find ourselves.
Of course, in a deeper sense, the school shootings and mass shootings are political too. The assailants virtually all have a single set of characteristics: men and boys between late teens and very early twenties, isolated, full of rage, usually with a particular hatred of women, in love with guns and part of that lone wolf cult based on nihilism and the murderous and suicidal total power of firearms.
Axios ran an item Sunday reporting that the theme of the Milwaukee convention will be “defiance.” Trump will go on a “defiance” tour, they say. Which invites the obvious question: defiance of what? I think we know the answer. Rather than viewing this attempted assassination as the febrile act of a deranged 20 year old or even — though there’s zero evidence of this — a misguided opponent of Trumpism, he is, as many of his high profile supporters have already done, portraying it as the collective act of his enemies. “They” missed and he is in some way defying their attempt much as he’s portrayed himself as defying Biden’s or the Deep State’s or whoever else is engaging in “lawfare” against him in the courts.
Yesterday Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote on Twitter: “They try to jail him. They try to kill him. It will not work. He is indomitable.”
“They” — it speaks for itself.
If this is really what the RNC is going to be it is at least in tension with Trump’s public statements since the shooting. His tweets and accounts by his associates and staffers — taken wholly at face value by most reporters — have been almost gracious, thankful, talking about unity and such. Other accounts, laundered through the insider sheets, refer to him as in a “spiritual” place after the shooting. The first reports of a revised convention theme spoke of a focus on Trump’s toughness, bravery and resilience. You could certainly imagine a high road focus on national unity coming out of what certainly many people see as a profound victimization and moment of personal bravery. It could conceivably seal the election for him, capitalizing on that moment and at least partly playing against type. But all that comes from blind sources and social media posts which are at least edited by staffers.
So which is it?
There’s one thing about watching those harrowing moments yesterday that genuinely surprised me and in its way impressed me. I did not think Trump had that kind of physical courage. I thought he would be cowering in a moment like that. And who wouldn’t? There was an incident in 2016 where Secret Service rushed him off the stage in response to a perceived threat. And I clearly remember him looking terrified. On Saturday he came as close as you can get to being shot dead with a bullet to the brain. But his first reaction was to reach back out to his supporters with a physical expression of power and defiance. He even placed himself and the agents around him in more danger by reaching beyond the cordon Secret Service agents placed around him. Yes, the shooter was already dead. But even though we can now play back the recording of the words “shooter down,” there’s no way anyone could so quickly or confidently process the full meaning of that in real time, or for that matter be sure there wasn’t another shooter. I doubt he even heard it.
Now, just as I wouldn’t judge someone for a moment of cowering fear or even totally rational self-protection in a moment like that, it’s hard to know just where that ballsy moment of defiance came from. There’s such a mix of adrenaline, terror and rage percolating through someone at a moment like that. Winston Churchill famously said: “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” That was probably a big part of it.
I’ve spoken to a number of people who had a similar reaction of surprise. Each of these people thoroughly despise the man but were still impressed, albeit in this very limited and specific way. But if we’re wondering about where this goes from here, how Trump will carry this forward, I think Trump told us in that instinctive, impulsive and I think entirely genuine moment.
“Fight … fight … fight.”
Raising and pumping his fist in defiance.
As far as I know, that’s still all we’ve seen of him since this happened. Everything else has come to us through the curtain of text.
That was his reaction and will continue to be because of course it is. That’s who he is. That’s the core of his politics.