The dauntless forward-thrust of Donald Trump took on a new momentum over the weekend. After returning to Mar-a-Lago following a two-day campaign stop in the west, the former president created a mini-storm of controversy by issuing an “I hate Taylor Swift” declaration on social media; arranged an apparently impromptu golf game with his friend, Republican donor Steve Witkoff; was the target during that golf game of what has been investigated as a second attempt to assassinate him with a rifle; participated in a public conversation to launch a new cryptocurrency on Monday night and then headed to Wisconsin and Michigan for scheduled rallies on Tuesday.
During the same period, both sides of the US political divide tried to absorb the implications and the shocking fact of another attempt to kill the presidential candidate. Trump possesses a rare capacity for reflecting on such events almost as though he is a detached observer. During Monday night’s conversation, which took place on the social media platform X, he noted: “Well, there’s a lot of rhetoric going on. A lot of people think that the Democrats when they talk about a threat to democracy and all of this ... and it seems that both of these people were radical lefts,” referring to Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot dead after wounding Trump with a long-range rifle shot at a July rally in Pennsylvania, and Ryan Routh, the man arrested after loitering in bushes with a semi-automatic rifle on the periphery of Trump’s course on Sunday.
After the July shooting, at which a spectator was killed by one of the shots fired by Crooks, there was a brief national pause in what had been an acrimonious and embittered presidential campaign. That shooting occurred on live television: millions around the world could see that the former president had avoided death by a near-miraculous combination of timing and happenstance. Many Republican supporters chose to see it as an act of divine intervention, and that became a theme at the GOP rally in Milwaukee the following week. And as he prepared to give his acceptance speech, Trump was sounding a welcome and needed note of unity.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together,” he told the Washington Examiner. “The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago.”
It was and it wasn’t. The first part of what was a 90-minute monologue was certainly reflective in tone. But after that, Trump switched to the more fiery and doom-laden vision of the United States familiar to anyone following his campaign rallies.
Then, the abrupt and startling exit of Joe Biden from the presidential race sent a supernova charge through the Democratic campaign, elevated Kamala Harris into her party’s hope and figurehead. It created the sense of a whole new election campaign which culminated in the debate between Trump and Harris in Philadelphia last Tuesday, when the Democratic message claimed the moral high ground in the ideological battle between the two parties.
So, when a second gunman materialised in the vicinity of Trump on Sunday, the Republican spokespeople were ready to make the connection between the Democratic depiction of their candidate and the fact that he has twice been the subject of assassination attempts. One of the first people to speak about the gunman on the Trump golf course was his running mate, JD Vance. At a campaign event, Vance told the audience that he was sitting at home in Cinicinnati on Sunday when his phone rang, and it was the former president.
“So, I answer it and he says, ‘JD you are not going to believe this, but they tried to do it again.’ I said ‘no, they didn’t ... you’re joshing me ... what’s going on here, sir?’ He says, ‘no I was playing golf and the Secret Service found somebody that was trying to shoot me’. I said, ‘Oh My Lord, sir, are you doing okay?’ He said, ‘yeah I’m doing fine ... I’m a little mad because I was about to make a birdie attempt on the sixth hole and they wouldn’t let me finish’. This is who Donald Trump is. This is 10 minutes after and he is pissed off they won’t let him finish his birdie putt right after they found a guy with an AK-47. By the way, that is kind of the guy you want to be president of the United States, right? Who is fazed by nothing.”
It was one of Vance’s better moments on the trail and also a revealing vignette into what must have been confusing and disorienting minutes for Trump after the Secret Service rushed him to safety. Vance was giving a glimpse into a private call. And it’s the phrase “They tried to do it again” that leaps out from Vance’s recap. While there is no evidence that Crooks or, so far, Routh were anything other than lone individuals driven by private and unclear motives, the use of the word “they” implies a belief that they are in some way connected to a wider conspiracy. Continuing his remarks, Vance called for a “reduction in the ridiculous and inflammatory rhetoric coming from too many corners of our politics” before pinning the root cause for Sunday’s intrusion by Routh on the Democratic use of words on the campaign trail.
“We can debate and disagree but we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he is elected it is going to be the end of American democracy. If you tell the American people that this person is the end of democracy, if you tell people this person must be eliminated, most of them, thank God, are gonna ignore you but some crazy person is going to take matters into their own hands and actually listen to the crazy rhetoric you put out there. I know it is popular in a lot of quarters on the left to say we have a both-sides problem. And I’m not gonna say we are always perfect, I’m not gonna say that conservatives always get things exactly right. But you know, the big difference between conservatives and liberals ... is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months and two people have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months.”
On Monday night, Eric Trump appeared on the Fox evening talkshow of conservative host Sean Hannity. The abiding theme was that while the individual security agents had excelled in their protection of the former president, serious questions remained about the overall system of security, as they had done in Butler, Pennsylvania, the scene of the first assassination attempt. Eric Trump spoke with the understandable anger and passion of a son who believes his father has been targeted in every conceivable sense throughout this election campaign.
“They tried to take him down. They tried to bankrupt him. They tried to throw him in jail. They tried to separate his family. They tried to take him off the ballot and subvert democracy in this country. They have done everything they could – they tried to impeach him, they took down his friends and yet that man right there is still fighting. And I expect him to be protected. I expect him to be safe. This country expects to have democracy and then I get to hear Kamala Harris at the debate saying that that man right there, who is the most brave person right there, is a threat to democracy? You know, Sean, the bullets are only going one way. It is really interesting how that works. Why is it that that man right there is taking every bullet, literally and figuratively. He has taken every bullet from a weaponised system; he has taken every bullet from a gun and guess what: the media sweeps it under the rug.”
Eric Trump is right in the expectation that his father should be able to continue his campaign under protection and in safety. But again, the repeated reference to an unspecified “they” suggests the presence of a shadowy and unchecked movement that uses every means, from the courtroom to the rifle, to stop the Republican candidate in his tracks.
It all means that under 50 days to election day, the US political terms of communication have reached the point of no return. There is nothing but accusation and counteraccusation and a complete breakdown of anything approaching mutual respect or even the vaguest attempt to listen to the other side.
On Tuesday, the Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy issued a post that read: It’s okay to admit both these two things are true at the same time:
1 It’s heartbreaking and unacceptable that Donald Trump was once again the target of political violence.
2. No leader has done more to inspire and endorse political violence than Donald Trump.
It was, at least, an attempt at conciliation and offers a succinct snapshot of the Democratic position. They will not moderate their campaign message that Donald Trump is a threat to the tenets of democracy because they believe it to be the true.
The danger now is that some other Ryan Routh is lurking out there and that he or she may get lucky. And the bullets may begin to fly in the other direction also. The danger for all political representatives, from both parties, is that they are moving through a presidential campaign that has become irrevocably poisoned and terribly dangerous.
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