President Joe Biden lost no time condemning the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and even phoned him.
“I have been briefed on the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania,” Biden said in a statement. “I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information. Jill and I are grateful to the Secret Service for getting him to safety. There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”
The Washington Post reported that, “In an address from the Oval Office on Sunday, President Biden urged Americans to ‘lower the temperature in our politics’ after shots were fired at the stage during former president Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday. ‘Disagreement is inevitable in American democracy. It’s part of human nature,’ Biden said. ‘But politics must never be a literal battlefield. And, God forbid, a killing field.’”
Even so, Trump’s apparent flesh wound was political manna from heaven for his campaign.
His bloodied ear, raised fist, and his repeated urgings for the faithful to “fight!” undoubtedly will become instant campaign iconography.
“Now, the media has been blanketed with the instantly iconic photos of a wounded Trump, fist raised as he is evacuated from the rally stage with an American flag fluttering against the bright blue sky behind him,” wrote The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty. “Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser, shared the photo on social media, adding: ‘Now this is some real Iwo Jima s--- right here.’”
According to The Independent’s Holly Bancroft, “Souvenir t-shirts picturing the aftermath of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump have already gone on sale. The t-shirts use an image of a defiant Trump raising his fist in the air while blood dripped down his cheek from his ear, as Secret Service agents tried to rush him off the stage.”
But right on cue, Ohio MAGA Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, a contender for Trump’s VP, wrote on X. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Vance, Trump’s equal in demagoguery, was evidently auditioning to play second fiddle on the ticket. At any rate, his obsequiousness paid off. “J.D.’s great at one thing,” said the “Liberal Redneck,” comedian Trae Crowder. “He’s great at knowing when, where, and to what precise angle he should bend over. Nobody tongue polishes a boot heel like” Trump’s new VP pick, according to Crowder.
As of today, the motive of the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pa., is unknown. But he is a registered Republican, according to media reports. He used an AR 15, a favorite weapon of the far right. (Last year a group of House MAGA Republicans sponsored a bill to designate the AR 15 as “the National Gun of the United States.”)
Since the attempt on Trump’s life, historians and pundits have been pointing to numerous assassination attempts and plots against several sitting presidents and Republican Teddy Roosevelt, an ex-president who wanted his old job back.
Roosevelt became president when William McKinley was fatally shot in 1901.
TR was elected in 1902 and reelected in 1906. When he ran again in 1912 as a Progressive, a deranged gunman shot him in the chest with a pistol at close range. The bullet plowed through his pocketed steel spectacles case and a folded 50-page copy of his speech before lodging in his torso.
Roosevelt, blood seeping from his clothes, insisted on giving the speech before going to the hospital.
While Trump’s macho image is carefully crafted, TR’s tough guy image was the real deal. He was an avid hunter and outdoorsman who championed “the strenuous life.” A lifelong advocate of robust exercise, he had a gym built in the White House, where he often boxed. One opponent accidentally blinded Roosevelt in his left eye. TR never told the man.
Roosevelt suffered from poor eyesight throughout his life, a disability that would seem to preclude military service. Yet in 1898, TR eagerly volunteered for the Spanish-American War, helping lead the storied “Rough Riders” in their immortal charges up San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill in Cuba.
In contrast, Trump, who disdains vigorous exercise and golfs from golf carts, famously avoided the draft and possible military service in Vietnam with a podiatrist’s timely diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels.
Anyway, in a recent column, historian Heather Cox Richardson quoted Vance and Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., the latter of whom wants a GOP DA to “immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination. The mega-MAGA lawmaker added, “Joe Biden sent the orders.”
I’m ridin’ with Biden (or any or any other Democrat). But I don’t see how Vance and Collins’s unhinged rantings will win many hearts and minds among independents and swing voters.
Richardson is also skeptical of such MAGA malarky. She wrote:
The idea that Democratic opposition to authoritarian plans like those outlined in Project 2025 caused violence might convince MAGA Republicans, but it will likely be a hard sell for Americans who remember things like:
- Trump’s own suggestion in 2016 that “Second Amendment people” could solve the problem of Hillary Clinton picking judges; or his 2020 attacks on Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who became the target of a kidnapping plot; or election workers bombarded with death threats as Trump lied that the 2020 election was stolen;
- the October 2022 tweet by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. mocking then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul after a home intruder hit him in the head with a hammer; or Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 2022 campaign video in which she promised to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda” as she took aim with a rifle;
- in 2023, House Republicans wearing AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of Congress; Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) saying his wife slept with a loaded gun after he voted against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) for House speaker; or Republican representatives sending Christmas cards showing the whole family toting guns;
- in 2024, the Kansas Republican Party’s March fundraiser where attendees could donate to kick and punch an effigy of President Biden; or Don Jr.’s reposting an image of Biden bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck;
- or Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina, who is running for the governorship and who is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention starting tomorrow, saying just two weeks ago: “Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it.”
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