trump assassination attempt
How Trump and His Band of Fascists Will Exploit Assassination Attempt to Silence, Demonize Their Critics
Will the media jump on the bandwagon and condemn Democrats and Biden for normal campaign rhetoric while continuing to normalize Trump's violent past?
Historian Douglas Brinkley told the story on CNN Sunday morning about how after President Ronald Reagan was shot, when he woke up in the hospital, he told a friend nearby that the experience had transformed him, that he was now going to dedicate his life to peace.
Not only did he not once blame the shooting on Democrats; Reagan instead largely followed through on that promise, Brinkley said, spending the rest of his presidency trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He later worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev trying — successfully — to deescalate tensions between the US and the USSR.
“Perhaps having come so close to death made me feel I should do whatever I could in the years God had given me to reduce the threat of nuclear war,” Reagan later told a confidant.
A few days after he left the hospital, Reagan wrote a personal note to then-Soviet leader Brezhnev saying he’d like to reach out and work together for “a meaningful and constructive dialogue which will assist us in fulfilling our joint obligation to find lasting peace.”
Don’t expect that this attempt on his life will similarly “awaken” Donald Trump. Already, his surrogates are using the opportunity to demonize — and shut up — Democrats.
Republican Senator and VP wannabee JD Vance was one of the first:
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
In other words, Democrats damn well better stop calling Trump and the people who support him authoritarians or point out the parallels between their policies and rhetoric and those of Nazis unless they want to be blamed for the actions of a random 20-year-old madman with the classic “bullied loner” profile of a school shooter wanting to die in a blaze of glory.
What an authoritarian thing to do. And it’s intentional: the goal is to blow up the re-election plan that Joe Biden laid out in a speech just a few days before the shooting: to focus on Trump’s violent rhetoric, violent provocations on January 6th, and his years-long embrace of authoritarian violence.
They’re trying, in other words, to silence Democrats. To shut down the Biden campaign’s sharpest weapon against Trump and his neofascist rightwing MAGA movement.
Republican Senator and fellow VP wannabee Tim Scott also got the message, perhaps directly from the campaign or maybe he just saw an opportunity on his own to turn up the heat; he jumped right in:
“Let’s be clear: This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.”
Republican Senator Ron Johnson, on CNN with Jake Tapper Sunday morning, blamed “Critical Race Theory” for the shooting, saying that the study of historic anti-Black racism in American schools was responsible for the attempt on Trump.
Marjorie Taylor Greene took the opportunity to suggest Democrats are trying to start a second American Civil War, as if people on the left are buying assault weapons and organizing into militias:
“The left wants a civil war. They have been trying to start one for years. These people are sick and evil.”
Democrats, in other words, damn well better shut up right now about Trump and MAGA’s violent words and memes. Condemning Trump and the militias and racists who promote him is now off-limits: that’s rhetoric that will lead to a “civil war.”
Georgia Republican Congressman Mike Collins went straight for the jugular, tweeting simply:
“Joe Biden sent the orders.”
In that, he’s echoing Donald Trump’s prior claims that when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for the top-secret documents he’d stolen from the White House, President Biden was trying to use the opportunity to have the FBI assassinate him. Trump’s exact statement on Truth Social was that Biden was “locked & loaded ready to take me out.”
Trump is now claiming it was “God alone” who kept him safe from death; so far, it looks and sounds like Trump, instead of choosing Reagan’s path to peace, will be claiming martyrdom and directing all the attention to himself. Just two months ago, in fact, Substack author Rohn Kenyatta warned of a scenario very much like this in his excellent LookingNWords newsletter.
Many hope that Trump and his followers won’t continue to use this attempt on his life to blame Democrats for political violence in America, although social media is already afire with such memes.
As noted, the goal of Republican efforts now will be directed to getting the media to condemn Democrats whenever they point out the GOP’s embrace of violence, from January 6th to Trump joking about the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi to the “very fine people” in Charlottesville.
If they choose to take the fascist response to a political bloodletting rather that Reagan’s de-escalation response, there’s a well-trod path — laid out in the book Trump’s first wife said was on his bed-stand for years — that I very much hope Trump doesn’t choose to follow.
Ninety-eight years ago this month, the echo of a similar martyrdom first appeared in Germany, an event I’m connected to by only two degrees of separation.
On July 4, 1926, the Blutfahne, or “blood flag,” was unveiled at the second party congress of Germany’s National Socialists.
When Hitler had earlier led a march to overthrow the government of the state of Bavaria, storming the Munich capitol building with a mob, the police stopped them before they were able to get to the governor or any of the legislators; two people were shot by police and one, Andreas Bauriedl, knocked over and fell on a swastika flag where he died of his gunshot to the stomach.
The bloodied flag became a sacred relic for that authoritarian movement. They carried it to all their major political events; over time it took on, followers believed, a “spiritual vibration.” They called it the Blutfahne, or “blood flag.”
My mentor, Gottfried Müller, told me a story that I relate in the book I wrote about him, that, at a 1930s Nazi rally, he’d been among a group of young draftees who were led up to the stage to salute Hitler and touch the Blutfahne.
(Müller later renounced Nazism and, immediately after the war, spent years traveling to German churches and civic halls with a Hasidic rabbi, Avram Pollak, preaching pacifism; he later started a series of peace-based nonprofits around the world, which is how I first met him. I helped start Salem (“Salem means ‘Peace’”) programs in the US, Israel, Colombia, Uganda, and a half-dozen other countries throughout the 1980s.)
Flag consecration — using a flag, particularly one that was bloodied in battle — is a European military tradition that dates back to at least the 10th century. For example, a “blood flag” was famously used to lead a battle in Germany in the Talschaft (forest canton) of Schwyz in 1240.
There’s even an American variation. In April 1871, former Union Army General and then-Congressman Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts gave a speech condemning the Ku Klux Klan. Rightwingers associated with the Klan claimed that he had waived the bloody shirt of a Black voting rights “carpetbagger” they had killed — which is where the phrase, “Waving the bloody shirt!” comes from.
Will Trump’s authoritarian movement continue with their pattern of echoing fascist and authoritarian language and behaviors (“poisoning the blood,” “vermin,” referring to Democrats as “the radical left”) by exploiting this attempt on his life?
Will there be a flag, shirt, or other relic touched with Trump’s blood or that of the supporter who died that becomes their movement’s Blutfahne?
Trump has already laid the foundation for such an effort: After his arrest in Georgia on charges of trying to steal the 2020 election, he had the suit he wore cut into tiny squares which were then sold online as if they were sacred relics.
As The New York Times noted last December:
“According to the NFT INT website, the suit is ‘priceless.’ There are enough tiny suit pieces for 2,024 buyers (because, you know, election year), and enough tie pieces for 225.
“In other words, it’s not just a suit. It’s a font of potential relics — one that positions the mug shot suit as the most important suit of Mr. Trump’s career so far, rather than, say, Mr. Trump’s inauguration suit.”
We’ll find out this week — as Republicans meet today in Milwaukee to begin their coronation of Trump — whether the GOP he now controls will try to elevate his previous calls for “revenge” and “retribution” against Democrats, using this incident as a touchstone. Or if they’ll use this attempt to try to use the media to block Biden’s re-election strategy of pointing out Trump’s own rhetoric.
Given how Trump, just four months ago, promoted on Truth Social an image of President Biden hogtied in the back of a pickup truck with a bullet in his forehead, this seems the most likely outcome, suggesting he’ll use the attempt on his life to increase his already-violence-drenched rhetoric.
Remember, back in 2016, Trump explicitly called for his “Second Amendment people” to take out Hillary Clinton before the election, saying:
“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.”
There’s speculation in the media that Trump will shift from his previous combative rhetoric to a Reaganesque call for national unity. He already has the GOP base, now fervent in the wake of this attempt on his life; his goal now will be to draw in swing voters “in the middle” by sounding reasonable.
Such a strategy would also help the GOP effort to neuter Biden’s attacks on Trump’s record and decade of promotion of violence.
So, will they use this event as an opportunity to renounce Vance’s, Greene’s, and Scott’s rhetoric, to repudiate authoritarianism, and to return their party to Reagan’s post-shooting embrace of bipartisanship and world peace?
Or are they going to continue driving the GOP down the fascist road by exploiting this event to both “wave the bloody shirt” and shut up Democrats?
Will the media jump on the bandwagon and condemn Democrats and Biden for normal campaign rhetoric while continuing to normalize Trump’s violent past?
Will Biden and his campaign — and progressive media — be cowed by the phony GOP calls to “tone down the rhetoric”?
Stay tuned.
Ocasio-Cortez Says Democrats Who 'Resign Themselves to Fascism' Should Retire
"This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people," said the New York congresswoman.
New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lashed out Sunday night against an unnamed "senior House Democrat" who said party leadership had already come to terms with the idea, following the weekend assassination attempt against Donald Trump, of the far-right former Republican president winning back the White House in November.
Responding to Axiosreporting in which the lawmaker, provided anonymity by the outlet, was quoted as saying, "We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency," Ocasio-Cortez said, "If you're a 'senior Democrat' that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism."
"This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people," she added. "Retire."
Since the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday that bloodied the former president and left one event attendee dead, many political observers and pundits have said or suggested that the violent attack likely bolsters the GOP candidate's chances in the upcoming election—especially at a time that President Joe Biden appears politically weak following a disastrous debate performance last month.
Despite grave concerns among many Democratic and progressive voters about Biden's ability to defeat Trump, Ocasio-Cortez has been outspoken in her defense of Biden in recent weeks.
"What I think the president does need to do is continue to lean in and move further toward the working class, and be more assertive in providing an affirmative vision for this country," Ocasio-Cortez told Capitol Hill reporters last week.
"If we can actually provide and chart out a future that is more leaning into the needs of working people," she said, "then I think we can chart a path to win."
Following Saturday's shooting, Ocasio-Cortez condemned political violence broadly and called the incident "horrific."
"It is absolutely unacceptable and must be denounced in the strongest terms," the congresswoman said. "My heart goes out to all the victims and I wish the former president a speedy recovery."
After Assassination Attempt on Trump, Pressure on Biden to Step Aside Must Continue
Trump is now stronger than ever and everything in our power must be done to prevent his reelection.
Let’s face it: Donald Trump is in a stronger position than ever to win a second term in November, with his active supporters even more motivated in the wake of the shooting Saturday. Preventing a Trump victory is now unlikely. But we must try.
Top Trump strategists are very eager for their candidate to run against Joe Biden. They’re now worried that the Democratic Party might end up with a different standard bearer.
Days ago, The Atlanticpublished journalist Tim Alberta’s in-depth examination of the Trump campaign’s strategic approach. “Everything they have been doing, the targeting that they have been doing of voters, the advertisements that they’re cutting, the fund-raising ploys that they’re making, the viral Internet videos that they have been churning out, they’re all designed around Joe Biden,” Alberta told the PBS NewsHour.
“So if suddenly he were replaced at the top of the ticket,” he added, “I think in many ways it’s back to square one for the Trump campaign. They recognize this. And I think they’re deeply unnerved by the possibility of a switcheroo at the top of the Democratic ticket.”
Last weekend, the Washington Post put it this way: “As Democrats debate the future of Biden’s reelection bid, Republicans would prefer he stay in a race they believe they are already winning.”
So many Democrats in Congress are refusing to call for Biden to step aside. And a lot of them are even cheering him on, encouraging his intransigence, as though nothing is amiss.
On Sunday, Face the Nationreported “top Democratic sources believe that Democrats who had thoughts about challenging President Biden are now standing down ‘because of this fragile political moment.’” Yet a guest on the same CBS program, Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, warned of a “high risk” that his party will lose the election “unless there is a major change.” He said that messaging from Biden’s campaign “is not effectively breaking through.”
While Biden boosters like to talk about national polling that sometimes puts Biden within a couple of points of Trump, such surveys mean little. Due to the Electoral College, the swing states will determine the winner. Biden is behind -- and falling further behind in most of them. Arizona, Georgia and Nevada have moved from “toss up” states to “lean Republican” according to the Cook Political Report.
And with an approval rating that now hovers around an abysmal 37 percent, Biden is increasingly playing defense in states he won easily four years ago.
“Democrats’ concerns about Biden’s ability to win are expanding beyond this cycle’s predetermined battlegrounds into states that long ago turned blue in presidential elections,” Politicoreported last week, in an article raising doubts about Biden’s prospects in New Hampshire, Maine, New Mexico and Minnesota. The headline: “Dems Are Freaking Out About Biden Even in Once Safely Blue States.”
Around the country, Democratic candidates are running well ahead of Biden. Last week, the Economist/YouGov poll found that “96 percent of registered Democrats say they will vote for a Democratic House candidate in the fall, compared with 85 percent who plan to vote for Biden.”
Biden’s presence at the top of the ticket promises to not only deliver the White House to Trump but also the House and Senate to Republicans.
In the light of such realities less than four months before Election Day, it’s alarming to hear many elected Democrats -- including some progressives in Congress -- publicly claim that Biden is just fine as the party’s nominee.
The happy-talk denialism from those congressional progressives shows a disconnect from the progressive grassroots. Many activists who devoted months of their lives on behalf of Biden in 2020 to vote Trump out are disaffected from Biden in 2024. Many are furious over Biden’s nonstop support of Israel during its continuous slaughter of civilians in Gaza. That includes Arab-American and Muslim activists and groups who mobilized for Biden four years ago against his Islamophobic opponent. Many climate activists who fought for Biden in 2020 against the “drill, baby, drill” Trump are disgusted with his reversals on climate policy.
So, the depressing poll numbers may understate the problem for Biden as the Democratic nominee, because they don’t count the gap in campaign volunteer energy -- especially in contrast with the highly energized MAGA base. Early this year, an anonymous letter from 17 Biden 2024 campaign staffers urged Biden to reverse himself on Gaza and seek an immediate ceasefire: “Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever.”
In 2017, the Trump presidency was properly mocked for its brazen assertions of “alternative facts.” It’s now disconcerting that Biden and his advocates so often lapse into puffery as to his true political situation.
That situation was laid out with chilling candor in a detailed New York Timespiece by longtime Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik, who was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and has advised dozens of governors and senators. The article makes for grim reading: “President Biden has spent much of 2024 with a more challenging path to winning a second presidential term in November than Donald Trump. But for reasons that have become glaringly obvious, that path has all but vanished.”
Biden “not only faces losing battleground states he won in 2020,” Sosnik wrote, “he is also at risk of losing traditional Democratic states like Minnesota and New Hampshire, which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama carried. If current trends continue, Mr. Trump could rack up one of the most decisive presidential victories since 2008.”
But so many Democrats in Congress are refusing to call for Biden to step aside. And a lot of them are even cheering him on, encouraging his intransigence, as though nothing is amiss.
Until the Democratic Party officially nominates its presidential candidate, the push for Biden to withdraw from the ticket should continue.