The Shot Heard Round the World
Did Trump's stoic reaction win him the election?
There continues to be a lot of overwrought reaction to the impact of the assassination attempt on the election, including a lot of usually sober voices who think it further cements Trump’s lead. I’m highly skeptical of that, although I do agree that his surprisingly gritty response has earned in the moment will help in the short term.
Chris Cilliza (“What the Trump assassination attempt means for 2024“) has a reasonable take in that direction:
This line — from his standard stump speech — now takes on much greater meaning: “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.”
That Trump was shot would be enough to drive that narrative. That he got back on his feet, with blood running down his face, and threw a raised fist skyward while yelling “fight, fight, fight” will turn him into an icon for many Republicans.
And the picture at the top of this piece — taken by the Associated Press’ Evan Vucci — instantly becomes the defining image of the 2024 campaign. It is already the cover of Time magazine.
That photo — and the defiance in the face of an attempt on his life it shows — will be, for many Trump voters, the proof that he must be the next president of the United States.
[…]
I struggle to see how any partisan Democrat will change his or her mind about Trump in the wake of the shooting. But, independents and low information voters? They will absolutely hear about this attack. Could it make them more sympathetic to Trump? Make them more likely to see him as a truth-to-power figure (if they are trying this hard to keep him from being president, they must really think he is a threat to the status quo)?
Again, I think it’s too early to know. People are still processing this.
But I will say that, 24 hours ago, it was virtually impossible for me to imagine Trump as a sympathetic figure in the eyes of persuadable voters. And now….well I can see it.
Others are waaaay over the top.
NYT’s Shawn McCreesh (“Amid the Mayhem, Trump Pumped His Fist and Revealed His Instincts“):
It’s difficult to imagine a moment that more fully epitomizes Mr. Trump’s visceral connection with his supporters, and his mastery of the modern media age.
Mr. Trump would not leave the stage without signaling to his fans that he was OK — even as some were still wailing in fear. And he did not just wave or nod, he raised his fist in defiance above his bloodied face — making an image history will not forget.
He has always been highly conscious of how he looks in big moments, practicing his Clint Eastwood squint and preparing for his mean mug-shot grimace. But there was no time to prepare for this.
This was instinct.
Axios’ Zachary Basu (“Trump’s martyr moment: Assassination attempt transforms campaign“):
On the eve of a Republican National Convention built on themes of victimhood and political persecution, Trump came inches — literally — from martyrdom. Republicans couldn’t ask for more of a contrast, with President Biden spending the last two weeks in a standoff with Democrats who fear he is too feeble to campaign effectively. Trump, who said on Truth Social that he felt the bullet “ripping through” his skin, will be welcomed in Milwaukee on Monday as a hero, a fighter — even a messiah to elements of his evangelical base.
The images from the shooting, plastered on front pages around the world Sunday morning, became iconic in real time. With blood dripping down from his right ear, Trump was captured by photographers pumping a defiant fist to shell-shocked supporters as he was swarmed by Secret Service agents. “Fight…fight…fight!” the indignant former president appeared to shout as he was shuttled away from the crime scene, where two people, including the shooter, were left dead. [stupid formatting removed]
Even POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin (“Trump’s Raised Fist Will Make History — And Define His Candidacy“):
It may have been jarring in the moment, but there was a reason so many Republicans thought to quickly post the photos of a blood-streaked Trump: They will prove politically potent.
In campaigns, perception can quickly harden into reality and symbolism is often more significant than substance. The pictures and film of Trump rallying the crowd will likely be the enduring image of this election and perhaps his entire political career.
Even before President Biden’s catastrophic debate last month, Trump had run on a platform of strength, portraying himself as a politically muscular figure against a weak and aging incumbent president. Next week’s Republican nominating convention will deliver Trump a hero’s welcome and an audience to match, befitting a party leader who had a brush with death.
“The raised fist will become the iconic symbol of the convention,” predicted longtime GOP strategist Mike Murphy.
Convention planners had already successive evening themes dedicated to making America “safe” and “strong” again, sessions that will, along with Trump’s expected cameo with his new running mate the opening night, be vivified with new meaning after the shooting.
It’s not just the pundits.
NBC News (“Democrats fret about the political fallout from the Trump rally shooting“):
At a time when President Joe Biden has been struggling to shore up support with fellow Democrats following a miserable June debate performance and shaky cleanup effort, some professional Democratic political operatives said Saturday’s shooting will end up sealing the incumbent’s electoral fate.
“We’re so beyond f—ed,” one longtime Democratic insider said, noting that the image of Trump thrusting his fist in the air, with blood dramatically smeared across his face, will be indelible.
“The presidential contest ended last night,” said a veteran Democratic consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a candid assessment of his own party’s standing less than four months before the election.
“Now it’s time to focus on keeping the Senate and trying to pick up the House,” he said. “The only positive thing to come out of last night for Democrats is we are no longer talking about Joe Biden’s age today.”
[…]
One Democratic strategist who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns and on Capitol Hill said that the physical targeting of Trump robs Biden of his main argument against the former president. Biden, the strategist pointed out, has tried to convince voters that Trump is so extreme that he presents a threat to democracy.
“That message is dead,” the strategist said, after a gunman tried to kill the presumptive nominee of one of the two major parties. The bullet that struck Trump “probably saved Biden’s nomination” by freezing Democratic calls for him to step aside and “doomed his re-election.”
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, echoed that sentiment.
“I’m very concerned that the net effect of the Republican convention will be neutralizing the core democracy critique of Trump — a felon who fomented a violent insurrection, tried to block the peaceful transfer of power, and said the Constitution may need to be terminated,” he said.
To be sure, not everyone is freaking out.
A Democratic operative with experience as a senior presidential campaign adviser predicted there would be a “slight immediate bump” for Trump with certain demographic groups. “But fundamentally, I think the race stays where it has always been. And we’ve got many moons still to go, as crazy as that seems.”
The operative said it is “so bizarre” that “many people on my side are firmly in the camp of [Biden] can’t win,” describing that view as a “vibes analysis” without a “rational basis.”
TPM’s Josh Marshall is characteristically sober:
I’m seeing a lot of people acting like the shooting over the weekend basically ends the election. That is silly. We simply do not know what if any effect this will have on the November vote. My own sense is that there’s a decent chance that the Trump campaign’s and GOP’s response to the attempt will backfire and eventually hurt him. After about 24 hours of leaks predicting some totally improbable “new Trump” national unity convention, the first signs this morning are more like Trump Unbound, with new demands that every case against him be dropped and Jean Carroll recant her jury-confirmed rape allegation. The truth is we have no idea and we shouldn’t make assumptions based on our fears.
Ditto Dan Drezner:
Anyone claiming that this is it, the 2024 presidential election is over because “the assassination attempt will turbocharge the persecution narrative Trump has placed at the center of his campaign” should not be allowed to write any more U.S. coverage without first taking at least three semesters of undergraduate American politics courses. Remember when Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies? That was 45 days ago. In the next week we will learn who Trump chose as his vice presidential nominee. More debates about Biden’s age will rage on. Maybe this proves to be an inflection point, but it seems far more likely it’s a blip.
Could a more normal presidential candidate with Trump’s charisma and flair for the dramatic use this to change the narrative? Quite possibly. But he lacks the humility and discipline to pull that off. At least since entering politics in earnest nine years ago, his entire persona has been built around sneering and contempt.
Over the course of eight years since Trump rode down that escalator, we have witnessed events in America which in previous eras would have been unthinkable.
And yet…Over all these years, Trump’s base of support hasn’t grown or shrunk significantly.
Not the Access Hollywood tape, not the impeachments, not the criminal trials, not the rape convictions, not Jan.6 , nothing has budged his approval numbers in either direction.
The idea that one striking photo is going to somehow move votes is a bit silly.
I don’t fundamentally think this changes anything. There aren’t that many undecideds in the first place, and the percentage among them who say “you know, I didn’t know who I was going to vote for in November, but Trump’s fist pump has cemented things for me” must be vanishingly small.
While I agree in principle, I will note that in a close election change at the margin will decide the outcome. What that change will be in a body politic where collective memory is measured in nanoseconds is anybody’s guess.
Who knows? Trump and the Republicans are going to be supremely confident, and with good reason. They are beating Biden. Picking Vance, who apparently called Trump Hitler just like everybody else, is going to push them further into vituperation and bullshit, just an endless mixture of far right policies and ungainly weirdos and then, if confronted, dragging this assassination attempt out as defense against any criticism.
The positive for Democrats is that no human being ever has enjoyed interacting with a person like this, and that’s why Trump is unpopular for reasons separate from Biden’s unpopularity. Arguing with some boring imbecile about January 6th and how both sides do the same is not what people want in any form of life. But they’ve blundered so far, and it might be too late, especially with Biden lost in a maze of defections. Right now, if the Democrats stage an upset, there will be an absolute barrier set up by the GOP. They will not accept anything other than a victory as legitimate.
What the attempted assassination and Trump’s immediate reaction will do is cause some, not all, maybe not a lot, of people to examine what they’ve just been jumping on the band wagon with. After all, at least for a few days so far, Democrats are not suppose to be shouting out the “deranged Hitler” narrative. Some will stop and think about what they’ve joined in with in the past and some of those will choose differently.
The basic outcome is this is a disruption and the resettling will be in Trump’s favor if it changes things. How many are going to go, they tried to shoot Trump and that really caused me to shift more toward Biden. Compared to move toward Trump. So the question is only, how many are being moved.
Also worth noting that there are still ~3.5 months to go in the campaign.
“They” in this case is a registered Republican.
@JKB:
I doubt anyone who believes in a ‘they’ that is concrete enough to take coordinated action, yet simultaneously nebulous enough that anyone can be added to the bucket of ‘in on it’ if need be was unsure how they were voting, if they vote at all.
Compared to Hitler Trump is a piker in dodging assassination attempts. Hitler was dodging them all the time. Seems to be all the rage.
This list is an incomplete list, but it is a good cross-section of assassination attempts on the life of der Führer. It lists 6 and not only are they diverse in the number of different elimination strategies employed but were all fighting over politics. (Wikipedia has a more expansive list).
https://www.history.com/news/6-assassination-attempts-on-adolf-hitler
The thing that struck me is how nutcakes the world was back then. Bombs, assassination attempts, firebombing, and death. Yes, all of these people were in desperate need of help but they all seemed to be very motivated by their politics. I think we really are better at protecting public figures currently but then again, how much do we actually know about attempts that were uncovered and quietly hushed up or minimized (across the political spectrum)?
Disclaimer: Nothing here should be confused as a challenge to even the record. Quite the opposite.
@Rick DeMent:
I believe that a better analogy is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. Thank God the would-be Trump assassination was not a pro.
Donald Trump got an owwie on his ear and didn’t fall to the ground kicking and screaming, and because of that I am going to give up everything I’ve ever believed and democracy, freedom and human rights and fight to make him my dictator.
Signed, JKB’s idea of a human being.
The concern I have is not that it sways a lot of voters who might have been on the fence, but that it increases the likelihood that Trump supporters turn out for the election. One of the advantages that Democrats had going into this election was that they had become the party of the high-information, high-turnout voters, while Republican voters were less informed and less likely to actually show up at the polls.
@Skookum: If evidence emerges that the guy that tried to shoot Trump had any confederates, or even any clear political motive at all, the assassination of the Arch Duke might become relevant. But as things stand now they are are having a hard time proving this guy had any clear political thoughts…or even had any friends at all. Princip had been highly active in the troubles of his time and place. A radical.
Seems yet another example of “America, the land of the free and the home of the heavily armed nutjobs.”
Here’s the chart that saved Trump’s life. Trump turning his head to this chart meant a shot through the ear rather than through the back of his head.
I think that for a lot of people the assassination attempt with just be filed away as more crazy shit that happens around Trump.
The dude was standing around pumping his fist right after, so how bad could it have been? Was he rushed to the hospital where we all wondered if he would survive for a few hours? No. As assassination attempts go, it was pretty lackluster.
(I can’t be the only one who saw him standing in the open, pumping his fist in the air, and thought “I guess it was nothing”)
One dead, three wounded — it’s barely even a mass shooting. There were two other mass shootings that very day.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
In a couple of weeks, if not days, it will just be another weird moment in the world of Trump. Like the time he told people to drink bleach. Or when he asked the Russians to hack Hilary Clinton’s emails. Or when he gave Chris Christie covid. Or when he tried to take over the government. Or when he said everyone on the Jan 6th committee should be tried in military courts and then executed. Or when he was found liable for sexual assault.
It’s Trump, he’s surrounded by a circus, and in a few minutes there will be something else going on. Like picking a VP nominee who suggested he would be “America’s Hitler” (apparently that’s a good thing? I guess?)
As for “they”, I was using the anonymous “they” but if you want to see a real “they, then here’s a lot of examples from media and others
@Skookum: The guy who assassinated Frank Ferdinand was also not a pro. The entire assassination was one error after another, including a bomb bouncing off the car.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand
And then there is this one would-be assassin failing to even kill himself:
I think enough time has passed that we can get the madcap comedic farce movie out of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand that it deserves.
@Skookum: Neither was Gavrilo Princip. He lucked into the Archduke’s car needing to U-turn lurching him into infamy. If we start having professional assassins/snipers start going after elected leaders at regular intervals, that’s gonna be a game changer.
@JKB: Wow! My free anti-virus/malware program wouldn’t let me open your link. You have another target in your vast left-wing conspiracy to keep “the truth” from ‘Murka. Run with it!
@Gustopher:
I was cooking when I got an alert in The Guardian app. It said something like Convicted Felon was rushed off the stage after shots were fired. I concluded it wasn’t bad at all, as opposed to, say “Convicted Felon lies bleeding on the stage after shots were fired.”
@Gustopher: I take it that you missed the episode of Legends of Tomorrow where in order to restore the timeline, the team had to make sure the Sarajevo assassination came off as planned.
ETA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOzPcbNjY7s
Well, I like the phrase “vibes analysis”. I know just what is referenced. I have my own vibes analysis, but I’m calming down. I’m trying to keep my head in the game, and wondering how I can help.
@wr:
An owwie. Now there’s some thoughtful and adult analysis. I’m thinking of that old phrase……. Oh, yes, …..and opening your mouth and eliminating all doubt.
The charismatic, disciplined macho man Teddy Roosevelt tried it in 1912, when he got shot in the chest during a campaign speech, in his bid to return to the White House. He still lost.
It’s going to be a turnout election, again. Will Trump being shot by a fellow Republican help Trump turn out his base? Nobody knows. Will it swing a significant number indies, women, and minorities to his all-white, all-male Project 2025 anti-abortion ticket? Nobody knows.
I’ve seen James make references to “OTB commenters” in the sense that they are somehow superior.
Having read many of the comments here the past two days I must confess: I have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. None. There are a couple. But on the whole its an embarrassment, really.
@JKB: You wrote:
I understood you were being generic, but the fact is that one person tried to shoot, and that person was a registered Republican. His classmates all remember his taking conservative positions. The candidate who lived up the street from him and did door-to-door remembers his family, and that the kid was a Republican.
All current indicators are that a bullied and troubled young man decided to play the notoriety game, and that he acted alone. People will not think “they tried,” they will think “that kid tried.”
The more plausible argument is what @Pat Curley: points to–that of a potentially more energized base.
@DK: That election just speaks to the peculiarities of our system. TR was running as a third party candidate against the incumbent Republican President, his former VO, and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. He actually came in second but got walloped in the Electoral College because he and Taft split the vote. He’d have won in a landslide as the Republican nomineee
@Jack:
I didn’t hyperlink your comment in another thread, but I mentioned you in a comment. The gist was that you have rarely, if ever, added to a discussion here.
I admit, I probably said “never” in that post, but I wasn’t in quite as charitable a mood. The fact remains, in a typical comment you do not defend a position, you do not engage the positions of anyone else, you actually do not even make an argument at all.
You shitpost. You troll. And I generally do not use either of those terms. It does not even require stretching either term to fit. They both describe the effort you put into your comments. I did have to stretch the definition of “effort” for it to fit your posts.
You do not engage in analysis here. So maybe think twice before evaluating whether another commenter’s contribution is thoughtful or adult.
@Jack:
And yet here you are, lurking and reading every day — obsessed, triggered, bitter, and mad.
Your MAGA tears taste delicious.
@Jen:
Maybe he was an angry Mike Pence fan out for revenge.
@Jack:
If you know this, why do you open your mouth?
@JKB:
JD Vance called Trump the “American Hitler.” It’s big of Trump to pick a Democrat for his running mate, but conservatives won’t like it.
@Jack: If your presence here is so embarrassing to you and you’d like to help, you might consider leaving. It would raise the average IQ of this blog immeasurably.
@Jack: And yet you keep showing up here and demonstrating that the OtB commenters are veritable rocket scientists in comparison. Hmmm…
Isn’t Jack the Drew guy who used to hang around here? They have the same tone and utter inability to be funny…iirc Drew was like every rich guy I grew up around with no style and unfortunate delivery. You could spot that type coming a mile away.
At the same time, you can’t blame a loser for coming back to gloat. Give him his due. For my own sanity, I’m counting Biden out and adopting gallows humor. Personally, I’m as moved by Trump’s photo as I was by anything Bush said after 9/11, but I was not exactly in the majority then.
@Jack: “I must confess: I have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. None.”
For some reason, many MAGAs seem to believe that their inability to understand just about anything marks them as superior. Welcome to the club.
I am waiting for any newshound to ask Speaker Johnson why God did not save Corey Comperatore.
Video of the guy climbing on the building as people try to get the police to pay attention. A building with heavily armed police inside.
Regarding gun control….
When seconds, even minutes, count, the police are minutes away from paying attention to their one job that day, much less a random citizen in danger.
I interpreted Trump’s fist pump as the instinctive reaction of a man who cannot abide looking weak, and who’d just cowered on the floor, lost his shoes and hat, and needed four Secret Service agents to haul him back up again, sparse hair all over the place, with a cut ear and blood on his face. Who had, in fact, just looked very weak indeed. It was reminiscent of an elderly neighbor who fell off her bike a while back and jumped up immediately crying “I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right!” – the instinctive response of someone desperate not to appear frail or dependent.
The mentality of anyone who would find it a reason to vote for Trump is beyond me, but then I’ve never understood why anyone voted for him in the first place.
@JKB:
Yeah, and a cop climbed to the roof, right? And rushed back down when the gunman pointed the rifle at him. The appearance of the officer rushed the shot.
Reality laughs at your fever dreams.
@JKB:
Allow me to add one more thing. As much as people want to claim the chart saved Trump. It is much more likely that the cop you failed to mention likely is the one who saved the life of the former President.
The shooter rushed his shot because the officer appeared. He turned and aimed at the police. Officer drops out of sight and the shooter turns back around and takes aim at Trump. He still managed to miss a kill shot by an inch or two.
But crediting the cop wouldn’t fit the narrative that the Biden admin planned this or at the very least allowed it to happen.
@Modulo Myself:
Commenters are way better than I am at spotting sockpuppets. Yes, Jack is Drew/Guarnari.
@James Joyner:
Oh, that makes so much sense.
@Modulo Myself:
His style comes from being almost rich. He’s made it to a certain level of comfortableness, but instead of being content with the home-family-happiness metric well adjusted people use, he judges his success on the amount of toys he can buy. He’s likely moved to a neighborhood that’s adjacent to the where the actually-rich are, see’s their much fancier toys every day, and it irks him. He’s too weak to punch up so he often punches down, while hiding behind a fake name.
I call this “Florida Rich.”
Notably, this also describes Trump to a T (only tbf to Trump he’s owns his jackassery).
(I want to be clear that I don’t judge people by the money they’ve made. I value family and happiness more than money, and it is likely drew/guarneri/jack has more wealth to his name (he’s also like 4 decades older so…). But man is it fun to watch people like jack be unable to hid their insecurities from complete strangers on the internet. )
@Neil Hudelson: @mattbernius:
Bernius, I don’t know if you know much about Jack, but he and I live in the same area. Putting that together with Neil’s insight makes way more sense than you can imagine.
In the span of a few decades, this place went from a smallish, super-wealthy enclave–to a place with massive gated communities of Florida rich, bitter retirees living in houses painted in one of three pastel colors. Their only joy in life is strictly enforcing arbitrary HOA rules, because it is the only place they have ever been given any bit of control.
Yes, I’m exaggerating a little bit, and there are some very nice, gracious people here. But it is not that far off.