Hundreds of millions of words will be written in the days, months, and decades to come about the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump that occurred just north of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania last evening. As I write these few hundred, early on the morning after, much is still unknown.
One of the most prominent “unknowns” is the “motive” of Trump’s attempted assassin. Since we live in a world of hyper-polarisation, this person’s life is now set to be forensically examined by online political and media actors of all persuasions in an attempt to find something – anything – to pin the shooting on their political enemies. In truth, we can say with some confidence that he represents nobody other than himself: Hundreds of millions of people worldwide love Donald Trump with an almost messianic devotion, and hundreds of millions hate him with a passion. Of the latter group, it was only this one person who crawled onto a rooftop and pulled the trigger, dying without accomplishing the task he presumably knowingly gave his life for. Trump is alive; and an innocent man who attended his rally is dead at the hands of someone else’s political rage.
That said, the motives are not entirely unclear, for all that they are formally unknown. You simply do not shoot someone – and in the process essentially guarantee your own death – unless you believe the cause is a worthy one and you are doing something that truly must be done. It is almost unimaginable that the motive was anything other than political. More on that below, but we must first recognise that in real world, political terms, the shooting has backfired entirely.
Trump is not only alive this morning, but probably at the height of his powers, politically. Way back in 2016, one of his opponents – I forget which – accused him of having “animal instincts”. This was meant as an insult. Yesterday we saw those animal instincts for exactly what they are: Having had part of his right ear blown off by a bullet, with blood streaming across his face, with the risk of more bullets in the air, Donald Trump stood up and raised his fist to the crowd and mouthed “fight, fight!”. If you watch the live footage, the reaction from the crowd to him is almost bestial – the fear leaves them in an instant, and they stand up and roar in response:
Best RAW Trump video yet. pic.twitter.com/V7J9krgmUz
— KryptoaD (@Kryptoad1) July 14, 2024
One of the most frequent criticisms of Trump – as regular readers of mine will know – is that he does not have a particularly strategic mind and acts almost entirely on instinct. What those criticisms – including mine – often miss is that the flipside of that flaw is that Trump has truly remarkable political instincts; perhaps better political instincts than anyone alive. The other thing that we miss, I think, is that Donald Trump lacks many things, but not personal bravery and courage. There are very few people alive, having just been shot, whose initial reaction would be to stand right back up while the bullets might still be whizzing through the air.
It is these twin characteristics, bravery combined with an almost unprecedented instinct for connecting emotionally with a crowd, that makes Trump the political phenomenon that he is. I was struck in the aftermath by a very normal Pennsylvania man interviewed on CNN who was attending the rally, asked why he supported the former President: Paraphrasing, he said words to the effect that there were two things he did not doubt about Donald Trump: That Trump loves his country, and that Trump does not have to put himself through the political wringer by virtue of his wealth, but does so anyway.
One of the ironies of this is, of course, that a frequent criticism of Trump from both left and right is that he was, during the Vietnam war, one of those who did not fight, which granted people the opportunity to sneer at him for cowardice on the grounds that he has never risked taking a bullet for his country. That criticism lies, this morning, in smoking ruins. It is not the only thing that lies in smoking ruins.
For several years now – since Trump came on the scene, really – there has been an endless drumbeat in the mainstream media right across the western world that “the far right”, which in practice often appears to include anybody broadly opposed to the progressive consensus, poses a risk of political violence if not outright fascist dictatorship. Yet in recent years the noteworthy political violence has all been directed against the right: From the murder of Conservative MP David Amess, to the stabbing of then-candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, to the attempted murder of US Congressman Steve Scalise, to the assassination attempt this year of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, to the events of last evening. On a less lethal level, we had the “mostly peaceful” black lives matter riots devastating American cities, while in France in recent weeks left wing violence was the reaction to Marine LePen’s increased vote share. While the right has been accused, relentlessly, of whipping up political violence, the actual violence in recent years has been overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, been directed against the right.
There will, of course, be no introspection, since violence has been redefined in the eyes of many on the left as meaning mere words. Consider this, from Fintan O’Toole, published in 2018:
The objects of domestic violence are more readily at hand and Trump has always been clear about who they are: immigrants, Muslims, the independent media, uppity blacks. Such violence does not at first need to be physical, but there is a relentless logic of escalation.
Trump is violent, they claim, because of his words. He is a threat to blacks, muslims, immigrants, and journalists. In another column, O’Toole (who I am using as one example out of many) described Trump’s political project as “pre-fascism”.
What is the ultimate logic of this rhetoric? This morning, I note MEP for Dublin Aodhán O’Riordáin is sharing tweets deploring the attack on Trump. Yet, in 2019, that same MEP (then a mere TD) wrote that Trump “has fueled & legitimised hate across America since his first day in office.” In 2016, O’Riordáin called Trump a “fascist”, a phrase he has never withdrawn.
When you say these things, don’t you encourage violence? We do not know, as I wrote above, what the motives of the shooter were. Yet we know that he wished to see Donald Trump dead, presumably in order to prevent him from taking power.
If Trump had died yesterday, at the hands of someone inspired by a fear of his alleged fascism, then there are a great many in the media and politics who would have some of his blood on their hands. As those same people call for laws regulating hate speech, the only appropriate reaction to them on a day like today should be physicians, heal thyselves. For all the talk about “hate crime” and “hate speech”, this crime is very likely to have been the very best example you’ll find of a crime of hate, motivated by the disgraceful rhetoric of others.