Trump’s life is still in danger

The most important news about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump was not the plain fact of his attempted assassination but a picture of it. And like many pictures, no matter how “iconic” they are, it didn’t last long in today’s media environment. Once it ran its course, that was it. Five days later, even attempted assassination is old news.

This is bad for the Republican presidential nominee. I don’t mean politically. I mean literally. Donald Trump’s life remains in danger. He is America’s greatest champion of rightwing political violence. What had been a flirtation before the J6 insurrection has since become a practical necessity. It was violence and the threat of violence that pushed many reluctant Republicans to accept The Big Lie as Truth. That “purified” the party of anyone who might stand in his way. And with that done, rightwing political violence had one more thing to do.

That is the story of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump as well as the biggest story of American politics. (Increasingly, Americans, especially Republicans, don’t see the utility in democratic politics as much as they see the utility in political violence.) But that’s not the story anyone is reading now. Instead, many reporters and pundits convinced themselves that Trump, as a consequence of nearly having been murdered, would stand before the country at the Republican National Convention as a figure of national unity.

Not only is he temperamentally incapable of any such thing. His incentives do not lie in that direction. He’s not trying to expand his base of support. His vote total maxed out at 47 percent four years ago. Therefore, Trump’s best hope for a legitimate victory this year is by motivating non-voters to turn out or stay home. And the best way of doing that is by continuing to do what he’s been doing, which is demonizing his enemies and repeatedly raising the specter of rightwing political violence if the election displeases him.

If Trump keeps going in this direction, and he will, because he can’t help himself and because he has no options otherwise, he’s going to endanger himself more. Why? The moment he pulls back, out of some need for political expediency, he will betray followers who have nothing but contempt for political expediency. Even all this talk of being a figure of national unity is risky. Rightwing politics doesn’t want unity. Unity means compromise. It means impurity. What it wants is domination and control. And it will seek that end violently, even if or especially if its greatest champion seems to be standing in the way.

I think the closed-circuit quality of all this could be at least disrupted, however, by a serious and sustained national conversation about the effect of political violence on democracy and democratic politics. Indeed, that’s something you might expect to have happened in the aftermath of an attempted assassination of a former president. But that conversation isn’t happening. The press and pundit corps have moved on. As a result, Donald Trump’s life continues to be in danger.

Why have they moved on?

It may be due to the high-speed nature of today’s media. But I think it has more to do with the media’s character than its speed. We saw this in feeble attempts by some high-profile pundits to characterize the attempted assassination as if it were an assault on the body politic, and as with all assaults, there had to be sides, one being represented by Trump and the other being represented by Trump’s counterparts.

Just one problem.

Not only was the shooter a Republican, but the 20-year-old white man from rural Pennsylvania also appears to have come from a family of right wingers who themselves seem greatly influenced by American militia culture. An insurrectionist interpretation of the Second Amendment was probably familiar to him, as likely was the belief that political violence is an acceptable alternative to democratic politics.

It’s been said that if the shooter, whom I will not name, had been a Democrat or Black or trans or some other thing the Republicans could identify as an enemy, we would still be talking about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. He wasn’t, though, so we’re not.

But if we leave it at that, I think we oversimplify the problem and overlook the consequences of ignoring the biggest story in American politics. The press corps is ignoring it, not so much because the shooter was a Republican, but because reporters risk appearing biased in leading a serious and sustained conversation about the effect of political violence on democratic politics that would, if done properly and in good faith, push the public toward an inevitable conclusion: that Donald Trump is partially to blame for his own attempted murder.

In the absence of that, lots of people seem to be feeling cognitive dissonance. However, it makes sense that a rightwing Republican would try killing Trump if you also understand that those who believe political violence is an acceptable alternative to democratic politics (as Trump does and the shooter did) often try to kill each other. The most serious consequence of avoiding this conversation, of course, should be the most obvious, that Trump continues to put himself in danger.

Ironically, it may be Trump himself who corrects this. Coming close to death by murder is a profoundly traumatic experience, especially for a rich white man like Donald Trump who has lived his 78 years of life imperious to violence. He evidently felt no threat after being told, on January 6, 2021, that many of the insurgents were armed. According to the J6 committee testimony, he said he wasn’t the intended target. And according to Bloomberg, Mar-a-Lago has been lousy with security breaches. I’m guessing, however, that he never felt any fear. Why would Republicans, even violent ones, want to harm their champion?

That reality collapsed in an instance, and the resulting psychological scars might be big enough for the Washington press corps to notice.

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