Attack on Trump to reshape election race
World leaders express shock at shooting as citizens fear rising political violence
By HENG WEILI in New York | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2024-07-15 07:07
Republican candidate Donald Trump is taken off the stage by security agents at an event in Pennsylvania on Saturday. REBECCA DROKE/AFP
Former US president Donald Trump was injured in a shooting during a campaign rally on Saturday, an attack that will likely reshape this year's US presidential race while US citizens fear rising political violence.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat who is running against Republican candidate Trump, was briefed about the incident and he spoke to Trump several hours after the shooting, the White House said.
"There's no place in America for this type of violence," the president said in public remarks. "It's sick. It's sick."
World leaders expressed shock over the wounding of Trump.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was "deeply shocked" by the attack.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt in May, condemned the shooting in a Facebook post.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote on X that the shooting of Trump "is a stark reminder of the dangers of political extremism and intolerance".
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said: "We must stand firm against any form of violence."
The attack heightened long-standing worries that political violence could erupt during the presidential campaign and after the election.
The concerns in part reflect the electorate's polarization, with the country appearing bitterly divided into two camps with divergent political and social visions.
"This horrific act of political violence at a peaceful campaign rally has no place in this country and should be unanimously and forcefully condemned," Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said on social media.
US citizens fear rising political violence, recent Reuters/Ipsos polls show, with two out of three respondents to a May survey saying they worried violence could follow the election.
Some of Trump's Republican allies said they believed the attack was politically motivated.
"For weeks Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning reelection would be the end of democracy in America," said US Representative Steve Scalise, the No 2 House Republican, who survived a politically motivated shooting in 2017.
"Clearly we've seen far-left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop."
The incident occurred two days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump will be nominated as the GOP presidential candidate.
Now an already intense US presidential election campaign appears to be greatly affected, with the focus likely to shift to security for candidates.
'Polarized' country
Ian Bremmer, president and founder of GZERO Media, noted that the incident is a "very grave "turn of events in a country that is very deeply polarized.
"This is the worst sort of event that can happen in that environment, and I deeply worry that it presages much more political violence and social instability to come," Bremmer, also president and founder of GZERO Media's parent company, Eurasia Group, said in a video comment.
The attack was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot at in 1981.
It drew attention to concerns about political violence in a deeply polarized US less than four months before the presidential election.
The perils of campaigning took on a new urgency after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in California in 1968, and again in 1972 when Arthur Bremer shot and seriously injured George Wallace.
That led to increased protection of candidates, even as the threats persisted, notably against Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Barack Obama in 2008.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202407/ ... 0df88.html
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Trump Assassination Attempt: A Round-Up
Posted on July 14, 2024 by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
The iconic image (from AP’s Evan Vucci), helpfully annotated to show how composition makes for an iconic image:
And speaking of iconic images, if your first thought is “Trump (nearly) died for us”:
(Notice, in Vucci’s image, a woman also supporting Trump in his agony.)
Or if your first thought is “Trump (nearly) died for our country” (AP’s Joe Rosenthal):
(The stars and stripes doing its work, although I suppose Secret Service agents in sunglasses will have to stand in for the Marines. But that’s where we are, isn’t it?)
Icons propagate. Already, T-shirts printed with Vucci’s image are on sale at a New Jersey boardwalk:
“Shooting makes me stronger.”[1]
Having begun, as it were, in medias res, let’s circle back to the beginning, and proceed in an orderly manner. I will aggregate the material I have read on the shooter, the venue, the shooting, and cui bono. I’ll conclude with some of the more humane reactions. Starting with the shooter–
The Shooter
We know very little about the shooter, although one of the first things we know about is his partisan affiliation (or proxies therefor). From the New York Post, “Thomas Matthew Crooks ID’d as gunman who shot Trump during Pa. rally”
According to state voter status records, Crooks was a registered Republican.
The shooter made one singular $15 donation to the liberal ActBlue political action committee on January 20, 2021 — Biden’s Inauguration Day, the Intercept reportedp[2].
(Smith was not carrying ID; he was identified through the gun and DNA analysis[3].)However, from the Inquirer:
[ex-Bethel Park student Max Ryan] Smith recalled participating in a mock debate with Crooks in an American history course in which the teacher had students stand on opposite sides of the classroom to signal their support or opposition.
“The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other … It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate.”
Crooks graduated from high school two years ago. From the Post:
Crooks was a member of the 2022 graduating class at Bethel Park High School, the school district confirmed Sunday morning.
Video shows him walking across a stage to accept his diploma. He also received a $500 National Math and Science Initative Star Award during his graduating year, TribLive reported.
His high school experience was unhappy. NBC:
A high school classmate, Jason Kohler, 21, said Crooks was a “loner” who was “bullied so much in high school.”
Crooks would regularly wear hunting outfits and was made fun of for the way he dressed. He often sat alone at lunch, Kohler added.
His post-high school experience seems not to have been happy, or at leat not STEM-oriented. BBC:
Crooks worked in a local nursing home kitchen just a short drive away from his home, the BBC understands.
Then there’s the family. CNN:
When reached by CNN late Saturday night, Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before speaking about his son. He could not be reached again on Sunday.
We have no motive. BBC:
Having established Crooks’s identity, police and agencies are investigating his motive.
“We do not currently have an identified motive,” said Kevin Rojek, FBI Pittsburgh special agent in charge, at a briefing on Saturday night.
It would be disconcerting if a diary documenting Crooks’s motives were found; a lone gunman, acting alone, but leaving behind a diary is a movie we’ve all seen before. And the sequels, too.
The Venue
From the New York Post:
Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pa., squeezed off at least five to seven shots — one of which grazed Trump in the ear — at an outdoor rally in Butler, just outside Pittsburgh, according to law enforcement sources.
Sources said Crooks crawled on the roof of a manufacturing plant more than 130 yards away from the stage at Butler Farm Show grounds.
Here is a map from the New York Times that shows the rally site and the manufacturing plant:
Security at the manufacturing plant (likely to be American Glass Research) was lax[4]:
I am talking to an individual who works in the building where the shooter was posted. Building does not have inside cameras. They think access likely gained via area circled in photo.
They do not recall Secret Service or law enforcement sweeping building prior to event https://t.co/erOQVBuSay pic.twitter.com/iiykEfPwTt
— Robert Evans (The Only Robert Evans) (@IwriteOK) July 14, 2024
And:
They have seen photos of the deceased shooter and do not recognize them.
They noted before the event that security seemed weirdly lax, and their building seemed to be almost ignored prior.
"If we live in a security theater…this was a security 8th grade recital." pic.twitter.com/5MUIokkQ02
— Robert Evans (The Only Robert Evans) (@IwriteOK) July 14, 2024
I recall reading, but cannot find again, that the cops talked to people at the plant, but only to tell them they’d be using the parking lot. Here is a report of “a guy” sighted moving between the buildings of the manufacturing plant:
JUST IN: Eyewitness says he saw the suspect at Trump's rally go "in between one building to the next" when he alerted the police.
"I noticed two officers that were looking for something or somebody."
"I was looking around myself and seeing a guy on top of one of the buildings… pic.twitter.com/PbXx8QSnnV
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 14, 2024
The question arises how Crooks picked this building, how he knew to get access, etc.
The Shooting
Here is an extraordinary interview from the BBC with an eyewitness to the shooting:
FULL INTERVIEW with a witness, talking to @BBCNews, who says he saw a man with a gun on a building roof firing shots.
Donald Trump was rushed off stage during a rally in Pennsylvania after gun shots were heard.
He talked to @BBCBlindGazza – more information @BBCNews pic.twitter.com/aWqSXbzor2
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) July 14, 2024
The prose version, “Witness says he saw gunman on roof near Trump rally“:
Mr Smith was listening from outside the rally and said he saw the gunman around five minutes into Trump’s speech.
“We noticed the guy bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50ft away,” he said. “He had a rifle, we could clearly see a rifle.
“We’re pointing at him, the police are down there running around on the ground, we’re like ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle’… and the police did not know what was going on.”
Mr Smith said he tried to alert the authorities for three to four minutes, but thought they probably could not see the gunman because of the slope of the roof.
“Why is there not Secret Service on all of these roofs here?” he asked. “This is not a big place. “[It’s a] security failure, 100% security failure.”
He said he later saw the agents shoot the gunman: “They crawled up on the roof, they had their guns pointed at him, made sure he was dead. He was dead, and that was it – it was over.”
Here is what someone very near the stage itself experienced. From the Free Press:
I was four feet from the stage, in a causeway with about five other journalists. My daughter, a photographer, was next to me. Her husband was next to her.
Trump was back on his feet within seconds, although his red hat was knocked off his head. He was calm.
I heard him shout to one of his staffers, “Get my shoes!”
He lifted his arm in the air. I think he shouted, “Fight!”
Then he definitely shouted, “USA!” The crowd chanted it back in unison.
Here is a photo of the bullet whizzing toward Trump’s head[5]:
A remarkable photo captured by my former White House Press Corps colleague Doug Mills.
Zoom in right above President Trump’s shoulder and you’ll see a bullet flying in the air to the right of President Trump’s head following an attempted assassination. pic.twitter.com/FqmLBCytoW
— Haraz N. Ghanbari (@HarazGhanbari) July 14, 2024
And here is a video of Trump shouting “Fight! Fight!”:
Trump yelling “Fight. Fight,” after getting grazed by a bullet in the ear, an inch from ending his life.
No panic. No crawling on his knees to safety. The man stands up, faces the crowd, and yells “Fight.”
Historic footage. Just incredible.
pic.twitter.com/9ERhGJaia0
— Lomez (@L0m3z) July 13, 2024
Taleb comments:
The NYT is in bad faith: any other leader (or NYT journalist) would have cowered on the floor.
Trump exhibited exceptional physical courage; recognize the fact even if you disagree with the politics. pic.twitter.com/6smqbxGg23
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) July 14, 2024
Note that there were more victims: “A former fire chief attending the rally with family was killed, as was the gunman. Two other people were also critically wounded.”
Cui Bono
Now let us ask who benefits. Curiously enough, both Trump and Biden may. I say “may” rather than “do” because of this salutary reminder from Stoller:
I don’t know why anyone assumes a big polling bump for Trump. Trump got convicted and it barely mattered. Biden showed cognitive decline and it barely mattered. No one knows anything right now.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 14, 2024
But let’s not be nihilists. First, Trump:
The first and simplest reaction comes from the New York Post (and I confess that it was mine, as well):
The moment probably also won him the election.
The same reaction from The Hill:
“President Trump survives this attack — he just won the election,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) told POLITICO in a brief interview shortly after the shooting.
Prediction markets agree:
There are far more important things than markets, as the Trump assassination attempt makes very, very clear. But it’s my job to look at this, and this is what’s just happened to the odds of a Trump victory in the betting markets, according to Real Clear Politics: pic.twitter.com/sYxqrM1Ia5
— John Authers (@johnauthers) July 14, 2024
But then I remembered [checks campaign timer] that 114 days is a long time in politics.
Axios draws attention to the effect on apartisan voters:
The biggest electoral impact from Saturday’s stunning events could come courtesy of low-information and politically disengaged Americans, who are expected to make up a decisive voting bloc.
The attempted assassination was so shocking that it immediately cut through a wide range of cultural and digital bubbles, drawing mostly sympathetic reactions from influencers, athletes and CEOs.
Elon Musk, for example, immediately endorsed Trump in a post that racked up more than 80 million views on X.
YouTuber Jake Paul, who has legions of young followers, tweeted: “If it isn’t apparent enough who God wants to win. When you try and kill God’s angels and saviors of the world it just makes them bigger.”
Axios, however, equates “electoral impact” with popular sentiment; however, the salient point is the effect on low information voters in the swing states where the election will be won or lost. However, Pennsylvania is a key swing state (which is why I keep drawing a red box around it on the RealClearPolitics poll averages chart), and while I hesitate to say that Crooks just sewed up Pennsylvania for Trump, he certainly did Trump no harm. I would speculate that turnout in the non-Philly, non-Pittsburgh counties will be, well, fervent.
The Telegraph argues that the assassination attempt reinforces Trump’s messaging:
Trump has built his campaign on the idea that everyone is out to get him. Federal prosecutors, judges, election officials, rival politicians and journalists have all been accused of trying to bring down his campaign and prevent his return to the White House.
Many of those claims have rightly been contested. But after the incident in Pennsylvania, even Trump’s worst enemies cannot deny that there are some who would rather see him dead than re-elected.
Trump supporters urge that the attempt reinforces Trump’s ethos:
And people say, why do people like Trump so much? Why are his supporters, why are they so loyal to Trump? You know why? Because of what we saw today. Because he got up after getting hit by a bullet or something, and he said, I’m here basically fighting for you, and fight on. And we don’t have enough people like that in this country in politics.
But Biden may also benefit. First, his staff can wrap him up in tissue paper again. Axios:
For President Biden, it was an easy decision to reach out to former President Trump, pull down his political ads and return to the White House.Biden advisers were unanimous that he needs to take his fight directly to Trump.
That’s a difficult case to make against a man who came within several millimeters of losing his life.
There’s now a broad recognition that Biden is facing a delicate balancing act in the coming weeks: He must continue to warn that Trump is a threat to democracy, while acknowledging the recent threat to Trump’s life.
Second, out of deference and respect to Trump in this difficult time, the Biden campaign can save some money:
The Democratic National Committee told Fox News that it is in the process of pulling down ads that it went up with on Monday on 57 municipal buses in Milwaukee.
Third and most importantly, I speculate that the Republican National Convention plus Trump’s cannily postponed selection of a vice-present, would already have sucked all the oxygen out of the room. The Trump assassination attempt will “blot out the sun” (I somehow did not preserve the link to the Democratic strategist who used that phrase). The campaign to unelect Biden has depended critically on constant, incestuous dogpiling in the press. That coverage will be much, much harder to get, and so indeed Biden may run out the clock. (Alert reader antidlc helpfully points out that the DNC may set a date for its virtual roll call before the end of the month.)
Conclusion
I really wanted to have a section about how the blame cannons are being deployed, but time presses, and so I must leave them on the cutting room floor. To conclude, I’ve aggregated some of reactions to Trump’s assassination that are more kind or humane, rather than less; tending to reject the Schmittian view that the essential dichotomy of politics is the friend/enemy distinction:
First, Russell Brand:
Trump Assassination Attempt Failed.
What now? pic.twitter.com/V2thuSJJM8
— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) July 13, 2024
Second, Robert F. Kennedy, Junior:
A truly presidential and beautifully poetic, compassionate, and inspiring commentary by @RobertKennedyJr on @NewsNation about the attempted assassination of President Trump. pic.twitter.com/frDGF5IUVH
— Jaya Phillips (@iamJayaLove) July 14, 2024
Third, Melania Trump:
pic.twitter.com/IGIWzL6SMJ
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) July 14, 2024
(I actually found Melania Trump’s letter touching. Odd, but touching. Note that all these reactions, in their different ways, appeal to the “better angels of our nature” instead of vacuous notions of civility.)
Lincoln, in his First Inaugural, got it wrong:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
In fact, slaveholders and abolitionists were enemies. But can anyone truly say that the country faces such a “polarizing” issue today? (Perhaps it should — climate, for example; or, well, capitalism — but does it?) Perhaps this time we can get it right, or more right than wrong. Of course, this would take an extraordinary turnaround from “defiance” to generosity of spirit but what are we “fighting” for?
NOTES
[1] On Trump’s fist pump and whether the Secret Service should have permitted it, The American Conservative:
An assassin can kill a president, but cowardice is what kills a movement. President Donald Trump didn’t give his would-be murderer what the gunman wanted. Trump survived the shots, then he did something profound—he waved back the Secret Service agents shielding him, freeing his bloodied face up from the scrum, and, with a look of defiance, raised his fist and said, “Fight!”
He shouldn’t have done it, according to the rules of presidential security. And the Secret Service were obviously torn between the urgency of covering the former president and getting him to safety, and allowing him to do what he was determined to do. They parted just far enough for Trump to show his face and pump his fist. His life and theirs were at risk.
But the risk had to be taken. The United States can’t be led by a coward or by someone who looks like one under fire. Trump knew in a split second what a leader had to do in that situation. He had to show courage. Morale is a nation’s blood. Trump refused to let the assassin shed it, even as his own wounds bled.
Despite the garish prose, I think Trump was right to do what he did. We can’t have the stagehands directing the stars, after all. NOTE Re Kayfabe: Could Trump possibly have converted himself from a Heel to a Face?!
[2] The PAC was the Progressive Turnout Project:
The Pennsylvania voter file lists him as a 20-year old registered Republican, while FEC contribution records show a single $15 ActBlue contribution earmarked to Progressive Turnout Project (same street address for both), so there's something for everyone to freak out over.
https://t.co/fJwoVLm3X4 pic.twitter.com/YtuCM29xmC
— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) July 14, 2024
Progressive Turnout Project’s email consultant was the cartoonishly evil Mothership Strategies. Mothership Strategies was not on my Bingo card!
[3] Crooks is said not to have had a criminal record, so where did the DNA come from?
[4] I’m not entirely happy with this account; the writer has done work for Bellingcat.
[5] There is a theory running round that the blood on Trump’s face comes from the shattered glass of a TelePrompter, but so what?
APPENDIX: The Cassandras
Here are some of the people who called it.
(August 30, 2023) Tucker Carlson, “Tucker Carlson stokes conspiracies, claims U.S. is ‘speeding towards’ assassination of Trump“, NBC: “If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, now you go to indictment and none of them work. What’s next? Graph it out, man. We’re speeding towards assassination, obviously. … They have decided — permanent Washington, both parties have decided — that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have him.”
(August 31, 2023) Yves Smith, “The Other Option for Containing Trump“: “It’s not as if this is the first time Tucker has brought up the possibility that Trump could be assassinated by members of the power structure.”
Steve Bannon (June 2024), the Guardian: “In a Guardian interview in June, Steve Bannon – a Trump adviser and former White House chief strategist – spoke of his concerns that the Republican nominee would be assassinated before the election in November. ‘It’s my number one fear,’ Bannon said, speaking before he began a four-month prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena. ‘Assassination has to be at the top of the list and I believe that the woman that’s running the Secret Service part is not doing her job.'” (I can’t find the original when I search on these quotes, and I tried several search engines. Readers?)
* * *
Sadly, this tweet supposedly from wint is a fake:
yes its real. please follow me for more real shit
https://t.co/JXotTam4c5
— wint (@dril) July 14, 2024
But:
APPENDIX: The Lighter Side
Via:
This situation reminds me of this [Your Favorite Ethnicity Here (YFEH)] joke:
Two YFEHs are hiding on the side of the road waiting to try and kill Hitler. They wait and wait but after many hours Hitler still hasn’t come down the road where they expect him. After a long time of waiting, one man turns to the other man and says “Geez! Where is this guy?” And the other man turns to him and replies “I don’t know… I hope nothing happened to him.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07 ... nd-up.html
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The US Came Close To Having TWO Presidential Candidates With No Brain
The western political-media class hasn’t been this sympathetic and supportive toward Trump since he bombed Damascus.
Caitlin Johnstone
July 14, 2024
❖
Donald Trump is now on the receiving end of a deluge of sympathy and support throughout the western world after surviving an assassination attempt, despite the fact that he himself is an open and unapologetic perpetrator of assassination.
Seems like everyone’s got a theory about what happened and why right now. As of this writing I’m content to just sit back and not know until more information comes in.
❖
That was a close one. America came an inch from having two presidential candidates with no brain.
❖
Now the same US officials who are responsible for overseeing the single most murderous power structure on the face of this planet are standing united in saying “There is no place for violence in America!”
❖
The western political-media class hasn’t been this sympathetic and supportive toward Trump since he bombed Damascus.
❖
I can’t wait til Trump is president so Democrats can remember that genocide is an inexcusable evil.
❖
Facebook has auto-blocked a Substack article of mine, which has never happened to me in the years I’ve been posting my Substacks there. The post was critical of Israel, while three subsequent articles I’ve successfully shared on Facebook thereafter made no mention of Israel. The reason given by Facebook’s censorship AI is listed as “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.”
I find this information worth sharing because it comes immediately after Facebook’s parent company Meta announced that it will begin censoring criticism of Zionism as hate speech whenever it can be construed as such. People are already reporting a marked uptick in censorship on the platform when making posts critical of Israel.
❖
The imperial narrative managers of the mass media have successfully paced the ongoing Gaza genocide from a front page story at the center of attention to something bad we just hear the occasional story about, like global warming or poverty. It’s still happening as ferociously as ever, but if you’re getting your information about the world from mainstream sources you are now only peripherally aware of this while your attention is directed to far less consequential things.
The picture the mass media paint of the world is night and day different from life as it actually is. It’s as different from reality as any other work of fiction, not so much because it directly denies reality or makes up whole cloth lies about it, but because it so drastically misrepresents what’s going on through the manipulation of public attention.
❖
Democrats have been babbling about what a decent and honest person Biden is while defending the decision for him to stay in the presidential race. This is ridiculous. Biden is not and has never been a decent person; he’s easily one of the worst human beings on this planet. And what’s funny is that his dementia has probably made him a softer, gentler person than he used to be. The world might be even uglier than it is now if he had his old brain.
❖
There’s a quote by Noam Chomsky which you absolutely must understand if you want to be able to make sense of political discourse in the west:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Regardless of your feelings about Chomsky, nothing about our information ecosystem will make sense to you without understanding and appreciating this quote. Until you get this and hold it at the forefront of your awareness, you won’t understand western politics, punditry or political debates.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/07 ... -no-brain/
Great 'one-liners'
