The attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania was a chilling and terrifying moment in the history of a country that has seen too many such shootings.
We are all grateful, of course, that the former president was not more seriously injured and that Secret Service agents protected him.
I am especially grateful that President Biden, who called Trump on Saturday night, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats have joined together to declare that political violence is absolutely unacceptable, to wish Trump well, to pray for him and to immediately put partisanship aside.
Trump’s instinct to pump his fist repeatedly to try to reassure his supporters that he was OK despite the blood on his face – an image that may have changed the campaign – is naturally part of the story.
Assassination attempt on Trump at Pennsylvania rally leaves two injured and two dead, including the shooter
The image of a defiant former President Trump, raising his fist as he is escorted off the stage with blood streaming down his face, is capable of re-evaluating an entire campaign. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
But there was also some ugliness behind the shooting of the 20-year-old, who was killed, and that too must be strongly denounced.
We are fed up with cynical attempts to blame the left or the right, or public figures who had nothing to do with horrific shootings, exploiting a tragedy to score cheap political points.
Although Trump was lucky enough to only have his ear grazed by a bullet, narrowly missing by inches, one person in the Pittsburgh-area crowd was killed.
Those who spread petty theories that “he has blood on his hands,” especially in places like X, should be ignored. The media should not take the bait, even if it generates clicks and ratings. The blame game is corrosive and irrelevant.
Even those who can't stand Trump denounced the attempt to kill him, and I hope that brief interlude of honesty and humanity would be the same whether the target was Biden or Vice President Harris.
President Biden Delivers Speech the Day After Assassination Attempt on Former President Trump
Whether it's a mass shooting or a targeted one, the only person to blame is the one who pulled the trigger. Our country has lost four presidents to assassins: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and JFK. Two other presidents have been wounded by would-be assassins: Teddy Roosevelt and, more than four decades ago, Ronald Reagan.
The common thread between these events is that the killers and would-be killers are insane. You have to be insane to risk death or life in prison by shooting innocent people or heavily protected leaders. Unless there is evidence of a broader conspiracy, these lunatics acted alone.
And I don't care much, in the inevitable profiles, how angry or discontented they are. That's why, as in this case, I stopped using their names a long time ago, so as not to inspire others to seek such infamy.
Former Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump all survived shootings by would-be assassins in 1912, 1981 and 2024, respectively. (Fake Images)
The killer, who also had explosives in his car, was registered as a Republican but also donated $15 to a progressive group, raising the question of motive.
Trump said after the shooting that we must “stand together” and “remain resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of evil.” Biden called the violence “sickening” and said “we cannot tolerate it,” adding yesterday: “This is not America.” House Speaker Mike Johnson said “we have to lower the temperature in this country.”
Those are welcome words, but such pleas did not stop Rep. Lauren Boebert and Sen. J.D. Vance from blaming Biden's rhetoric for the shooting.
Johnson calls on parties to tone down rhetoric after assassination attempt on Trump
If the president had wanted to capitalize on the shooting, he could have pointed out that hours earlier he had called for gun control, while accusing Trump of following the orders of the NRA. However, some Trump supporters criticized Biden for saying he would put Trump on target, even though he was obviously using a political metaphor.
Trump himself has often been accused of fomenting violence with his harsher language at rallies, so it is ironic that he came close to becoming a victim.
But it is also true that Trump has been criticized by the press for nine long years, particularly after January 6, and castigated as a would-be dictator and a danger to democracy, even going so far as to transform his face into that of Hitler on a recent cover of The New Republic.
Irresponsible depictions of former President Trump as an insurgent fascist and an imminent threat to democracy seemed like fodder for any would-be assassin to criticize. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Such demonization could easily convince a mentally unbalanced person that the world would be better off without him.
The left has certainly employed this tactic. After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton, who had used his presidential pulpit to criticize Rush Limbaugh, denounced “reckless speech” and said that the airwaves are too often used “to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us torn and angry at each other.” As part of my front-page article, I reported that the radio show host was accusing liberals of trying to foment a “national hysteria” against the conservative movement.
The 1981 shooting of Reagan was carried out outside the Washington Hilton by a maniac who wanted to impress Jodie Foster. (I had to knock on doors to find a phone after rushing to the hospital, and was later informed by paramedics that Reagan had lost far more blood than the White House had acknowledged.)
TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT REVIVES MEMORIES OF SIMILAR ATTACK ON REAGAN
The 2011 shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson sparked an irrational attack that blamed Sarah Palin because her campaign had released a political map with crosshairs marking Democratic districts being targeted.
I wrote an article calling the whole thing ridiculous, and my fellow critics eventually concluded that I was right, since the lunatic who wounded the then-congresswoman and killed six others had never seen the map before the massacre. Palin unsuccessfully sued the New York Times after a careless editorial revived the smear.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by Secret Service agents as he is led off the stage at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. (Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images)
And in Virginia in 2017, a gunman opened fire at a Republican baseball practice, nearly killing House Republican Caucus Leader Steve Scalise. Because the shooter was an avowed liberal and Rachel Maddow fan, the right went on the offensive, and the left said ideology had nothing to do with the tragedy.
As for the motivations of the mass shooters (at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, Buffalo, Uvalde, and others too numerous to list), consider the utter lack of remorse and detachment from reality required to kill large numbers of strangers, including children, in a dance hall or classroom.
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Donald Trump's miraculous survival, while it electrified this week's Republican convention, is a stark reminder that real human beings are engaged in what we euphemistically call political warfare.
However, if history is any guide, finger-pointing and debates over gun control will quickly resume as many of us wonder why political violence in our society seems like an intractable problem.
