American politics has entered the most dangerous phase of its nearly 250-year existence, with the assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump on July 13 in Pennsylvania. As of this writing, the gunman and one audience member are being reported dead, and two other audience members are in critical condition.
One is grateful that Trump appears to have suffered only minor injuries and that his doctors say he is well. Political violence is always fatal to democracy, which is a big political argument. As soon as people get out their guns, it isn’t a democracy anymore, it is a war.
Trump and his partisans will inevitably attempt to use the incident to drive further polarization and grievance-based politics. They should be denied ammunition for any such efforts.
The political violence could not have come at a worse time. Although the Right is blaming the political left for the violence, saying that its meme that Trump has dictatorial tendencies is responsible, the fact is that he did try to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, and some of his acolytes, at least, brought guns and ammunition to Washington, D.C, for the purpose, including the Proud Boys. It seems clear that the lives of Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi and others in the Capitol had been in danger that day, had security not whisked them to safety.
The mob called into being by Donald J. Trump chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” which was a call for an assassination. Insiders have reported that Trump expressed support for the sentiment.
As it was, a deranged follower of Trump came looking for Pelosi at her house in San Francisco and tried to kill her husband Paul with a hammer when he found she wasn’t there.
Trump appears to have thought that the attempt on Paul Pelosi’s life, which left him with a fractured cranium, was hilarious. In 2023 he told a rally, ““We’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco. How’s her husband doing, by the way, anybody know?” He added that the wall around her house “didn’t do a very good job,” apparently a bizarre reference to her opposition to building a wall at the Mexico border.
The Trump crowd broke into uproarious laughter.
The Hill reported, “Donald Trump Jr. posted several photos and comments on Twitter and Instagram making light of the violent home invasion attack last week against Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).”
When President Biden awarded Nancy Pelosi the Presidential medal of freedom, anchor Rachel Campos-Duffy on the notoriously pro-Trump Fox Cable News, quipped that Pelosi “needs the hammer instead of the medal.”
This cavalier attitude toward political violence must not be emulated by Democrats. It should be remembered that the bloody May Day demonstrations by the Left in Weimar Germany in 1929 radically hurt their image with the German middle classes and paved the way for the rise of Hitler.
This is a time for extreme political maturity by members of both major parties. The Republic depends on it. Trump and his partisans will inevitably attempt to use the incident to drive further polarization and grievance-based politics. They should be denied ammunition for any such efforts.
With that, I wish Mr. Trump a speedy recovery.
