The assassination attempt on Trump’s life takes priority over the Weekly Defrost issue I had planned; that’ll come out next week. What we know: a man climbed onto a one-story roof with an AR-style rifle, probably an AR-15, 60 to 100 metres from an evening Trump rally. Law enforcement failed to react to a warning from a member of the public in time. Several shots were fired, killing a bystander and critically injuring two others. Trump's ear was cut, either by a bullet or by glass shards from his teleprompter. Trump’s reaction was pitch-perfect PR, stalling the Secret Service who dogpiled him and tried to bring him down the stairs to, essentially, mug for the camera: pumping a fist and allegedly mouthing "fight! fight! fight!" The Secret Service shot and killed the shooter.
What we do not know:
Who the shooter was.
What their motive was.
What all of this will mean.
To start at the beginning: political violence in a democracy is bad. We can joke all we like about supporting the IRA, but the simple fact is that violent people are unpredictable and violent actions in pursuit of a good cause breed dangerous counterreactions. There are politically violent acts of resistance that are right and necessary - for instance, MK in South Africa was ineffectual, but justified - but these belong to resistance against authoritarian and oppressive regimes.
I don't mind if you punch a Nazi and I frankly think the world would be a better place if Trump wasn’t in it. He’s both a threat to democracy and a monster to the people around him, unrepentant and uniquely well-suited to lead his dangerous movement. But violence is unpredictable and difficult to control, and while I can't speculate on the mentality of the assassin for a certainty my prior assumption is always that if you're willing to bet your life on an assassination, your judgement is probably unsound.
See Oswald, Lee Harvey, who is somehow still ascribed sinister motives despite so obviously being an isolated and mentally sick ex-vet. (The vast majority of people who suffer from schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses are not violent, they’re just people like you and me, and that stigma is unearned and unhelpful. I’m simply speaking about the rare tiny minority overrepresented in assassinations in the USA and elsewhere.)
So the shots missed, an innocent person part of a nasty movement is dead with another two struggling to cling to life in hospitals, and Trump now has the martyrdom and the victimhood he’s been claiming without anything to back it up for the past nine years. My biggest concern now is the threat of reprisals. Americans so far have proven to be almost entirely bark without bite when it comes to constant talk of civil war. There have been only a handful of acts of political violence in the past few years, like the Giffords assassination attempt, the Congressional baseball shooting, and the January 6th assault. All in one of the largest countries in the world, and one with a notoriously poisoned political environment.
To make a comparison, India is a very impressively stable and vibrant democracy, and they have regularly experienced political violence on several axes and of a greater magnitude, from Sikh militants seizing the Golden Temple to the Naxalite guerillas fighting the Cold War to this day. The reason for the difference seems obvious: Americans live stable and wealthy lives untroubled by violence and disruption by global standards, so there is not much of a cycle to breed more violence. This is a big step towards changing that. I feared more violence after January 6th and I was wrong; that failed to trigger other shootings. Yet I remain concerned at the thought that America is full of angry people with guns, many of whom are mentally unwell, and for years Trump's movement has been "waiting for a signal".
That doesn't guarantee it'll never come to blood, and it most certainly won't come to civil war or any embarrassing fantasies like that. It's a joke that serious people give a moment of their time to scenarios like that. But Americans do need to take the threat of a new kind of shooting seriously. After all, the country has proven that constant public shootings will be tolerated without action to prevent them.
Next, then, comes the political impact. Everybody saying that Trump has now won the election is jumping to conclusions too soon; in such a polarised country, where so many of the fringe, conspiratorial and "save our country!" types are already inclined to either Trump, Kennedy or not voting, I don't think a few months from now that the fact Trump's ear got hurt and Democrats responded appropriately will have much of an electoral impact. The country shrugged off January 6th, I think they can downplay this, especially because it's not like Trump is guaranteed to cover himself in glory overegging his response.
Nonetheless, this is atrocious timing. The attempt comes right as Trump is leading into the Republican National Convention, where he will be given a golden opportunity to talk up how he's going to save the country and fire up turnout on his side, with a shield against criticism with which to browbeat Democrats that could previously call him a threat. Pair that with announcing his Vice-President and he gets to seize the media cycle for some time, which may drag out further if a cycle about Trump's apex is followed by another cycle about, say, a leading Democrat getting out of line and saying something "inappropriate", like pointing out how Trump mocked Paul Pelosi, a victim of political violence, or more generally stating the extraordinary obvious sense check that this febrile era in America owes primarily to Trump's rhetoric over the past nine years.
Most critically, just one day ago the news cycle fixated on how Biden needed to be replaced. This was good news for Democrats; it would be highly damaging for Biden in the unlikely event he staggered on to the September debate or even to the November election, but it was a necessary risk to endure because it would probably force the Democrats to change their candidate. By now, the donation train has frozen up to Biden, and if the Democrats want to turn the lights back on, they need a new candidate.
Yet all this has now changed. Biden's travails are swept from the news. Democrats cannot afford to look preoccupied with their own internal troubles at this time: to swap Biden out would not only be treated as disrespectful by Republicans at a time when unity and stability is required, but look like a godawful contrast of the Democrats imploding as Trump ascends to the highest heights of popularity and credibility that he has ever enjoyed in his career. How are the Democrats supposed to generate a good news cycle? To properly introduce their new candidate on the front foot, and proactively define them before Trump can?
This leaves only one option to save the election from a martyred Trump and an ever-more-radicalised right wing: Biden needs to fuck this crisis up so bad. I am dead serious. I need him to go out there for an hourlong press conference about the Trump shooting and flub every single answer. He needs to tell us how Shinzo Abe blew the Vice President's head off, which reminds him of his time crash landing in Bosnia. He won’t do this intentionally, of course. But we know that Biden is capable of gaffes under pressure, and failing sometimes to recognise and usually to sufficiently make up for them.
The Democrats need Biden to visibly degrade to the point that the only suitable response, in this time of crisis, is to get rid of him and put in a candidate who is appropriate for what the moment demands. And, ideally, they need that to happen quick, before the RNC can prejudge Harris for the public. Democracy hinges on this moment not because the shooting makes Trump the prohibitive favourite in November - he already was the favourite - but because it's given him an invincibility buff at the exact moment Democrats needed to counterstrike, and they have to pop the bubble first. That means we need a Biden fuck up, or a Trump fuck up.
Jesus. How has it come to this? If all of this has you feeling depressed, I understand. I felt normal at first this morning - I'd honestly been expecting this for years, and surprised it took this long - but as the day has gone on, I felt more and more distress. Just as is being felt across America; just as hope is sinking for the anti-Trump coalition, and pro-Trump forces are becomig more convinced than ever that Trump is uniquely persecuted, and radical action in government is necessary to protect and save him and his Republic. I can’t offer you answers for what comes next - we will have to wait and see. But what I can offer you, to lighten your spirits a little, is my list of suspects. Feel free to send in submissions to add to the dossier. I look forward to finding out who was really behind this.
Suspect List
Nikki Haley
Donald Trump Jr.
Christopher Luxon, working in collaboration with Gavin Newsom (hashed out while playing baseball in Oracle Park)
Donald Trump (blood capsule false flag)
John Lennon
Hunter Biden disguised as a Duck Dynast (suspicious first name)
John F. Kennedy Jr.
Hillary Clinton
Joe Biden (with a water pistol (in the conservatory (setting off a 50,000 part Rube Goldberg machine)))
Judith “The Crusher” Collins
Pope Francis (hearing Joe’s prayers and calling in a spiritual airstrike)
Donald Trump’s ear (just did that)
Thelonious Ellison
Greta Thunberg
Bernie Sanders (planning to run for the Republican nomination)
Secret Service (ripped his ear reacting to fireworks)
Mitt Romney
Pete Buttigieg (non-lethal intent, wanted to be first mover condemning political violence)
Jimmy Carter’s last hurrah
James Garfield
Marianne Williamson (Mirri Maz Duur’s Trump)
Andrew Garfield (catches the President when he falls from the Empire State Building due to blood loss, fatal whiplash)
al-Qaeda, collectively (to boost Trump’s chances)
Nigel Farage (couldn’t be bothered coming to campaign for him)
Justin Trudeau’s press contingent
Joe Biden alternate theory (trying to distract the Democrats long enough to secure the nomination)
Scott Walker (trying to gin up hype for Milwaukee)
John Fetterman (this state ain’t big enough for the two of us)
Chuck E Cheese
Mace Windu (loves the Republic)
Keir Starmer (things can only get better)
Vincent Van Gogh
Batman (gun control advocacy)
Hunter (Bad Batch)
Amy Conan BARRETT (needed to test the immunity doctrine)
Joe Biden theory #3 (meant to order some Coke, misspoke and ordered a hit)
Chris Kyle (second sniper Jack Ruby’d him)
Alec Baldwin
Richard Nixon (there can only be one (President immune to consequences))
Bald guy (Target down. Great work, 47. Now head towards an exit.)
Toby Manhire
Jacob Rees-Mogg (hired a professional bounty hunter to do it (who hired Chat-GPT to do it (who hired RFK Jr.'s brainworms to do it)))
Tiger King
Ted Cruz (Zodiac Killer)
Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson NOT Tom Cruise)
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