Trump is surround by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage after a shooting at his campaign rally in Butler, Pa. on Saturday.Gene J. Puskar/AP
A Sense of Doubt blog post #3437 - After Trump is Shot...
As I wrote in yesterday's post, I am behind schedule. I am writing these words Friday the 19th, almost a week after former president Trump was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania. From the future where I am sitting, I saw Trump speak last night -- 2407.18 -- at the Republican National Convention (RNC), telling the story of the assassination on his life in melodramatic fashion, claiming that he will tell the story once and once only as it is too painful to recall. Somehow, I doubt both of those statements. Given the detail with which he embellished the tale of the shooting and his propensity to repeat himself, I seriously doubt he will not ever tell that story again.
I never really want to advocate hate and violence. I have not changed my opinion on the danger Trump poses to our country and our way of life. I do not think he's any less dangerous, unhinged, narcissistic, or sociopathic. But I would not have actually wished him to be shot let alone killed. It's wrong. It's a tragedy, but that does not mean I am filled with sympathy for him. Not that he deserved it, but I can understand why someone might want to shoot him. I can also understand the rhetoric that might motivate someone to shoot Biden or Kamala Harris or AOC or Nancy Pelosi, Jack Smith, etc.
Trump declared that his speech at the RNC would be a call for unity and a message to end the divisiveness and work together. He aped one of Biden's central messages from the 2020 campaign, to govern for all Americans, not just half, red or blue, Trumpists or not. But then he could not resist his usual jabs and nastiness. He claimed Biden is a worse president than if we combined the ten worst in history despite scholars ranking Biden 14th and Trump the worst as explained here:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/trump-rally-shooting-reaction-republicans/
Condemnation Pours Out After Trump Rally Shooting. So Do Heated Allegations.
Prominent Republicans rushed to tie the shooting to Biden—and issued threats of their own.
Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) said in a post on X that the local district attorney “should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination.” In another post, Collins claimed, “Joe Biden sent the orders,” apparently referring to a recent statement Biden made to donors that “we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”
House Speaker Johnson, in the interview on NBC News Sunday, said, “I mean, I know that he didn’t mean what is being implied there, but that kind of language—on either side—should be called out.” On Sunday afternoon, NBC reported additional context from Biden’s remarks.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) claimed, without evidence, “the Democrats and the media are to blame for every drop of blood spilled today.” She added: “President Trump said “FIGHT,” SO WE WILL!!”
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) told NBC News that he condemns “100 percent of all political violence,” before adding, without evidence, “it is obvious [the Trump shooting attempt] was because of the leftists.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) made a similar comment to NBC affiliate KUSA of Denver, saying, “I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting today,” adding, “everyone who has called him a fascist, everyone who has called him a threat to democracy, who said that he should be put in a bullseye as Joe Biden said, they need to have some very deep reflection tonight before another tragedy like this takes place.”
Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, a major Trump campaign backer, said in a post on X, “Joe Biden and Democrats have invited this into our country”; in other posts Kirk appeared to blame the press and “the left” more broadly.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), in a joint statement with former U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, called for Biden to “immediately order that all federal criminal charges against President Trump be dropped, and to ask the governors of New York and Georgia to do the same,” which they claimed “would help heal wounds and allow all Americans to take a deep breath and reflect on how we got here.”
Prominent Pennsylvania Republican and former Senate candidate Sean Parnell said in a post on X that he was at the rally and near Trump and the attendees who were shot, adding, “It happened because of this sort of BS rhetoric from [Biden] & the rest of your party,” while retweeting a post from Biden calling Trump “a genuine threat to this nation.”
Trump, for his part, said in a statement posted to Truth Social: “It is incredible that such an act can take place in our Country.” He added that the shooter was dead, and he thanked the Secret Service and law enforcement for their quick response, while extending condolences to the family of those killed and injured.
Recounting the shooting itself, Trump said: “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”
In a new statement shared Sunday morning, Trump said, in part, “In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/attempted-donald-trump-assassination-butler-maga-blame-biden/Attempted Trump Assassination Triggers a Flood of MAGA BS
In black-is-white fashion, MAGA rushes to blame Biden and Democrats for political violence.
It is hardly surprising that a political movement that has as its godhead a convicted felon and inveterate liar who attempted to overturn an election and incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to retain power would within nanoseconds exploit the assassination attempt at a Donald Trump rally that left one attendee dead. But the utter brazenness of this effort has been stunning. Before crucial details were known—who’s the shooter? why did he do this?—MAGA was out in full-force to blame President Joe Biden, Democrats, and progressives for this shooting by stirring up anti-Trump sentiment. Leading the way in unhinged right-wing responses, Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) called for Biden to be arrested for “inciting an assassination.”
Even after it emerged that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the alleged shooter, was a registered Republican (who apparently made a $15 donation to a liberal political action committee in 2021), the crap kept coming. Sean Parnell, a right-wing commentator who in 2021 suspended his Senate campaign in Pennsylvania after his wife accused him of spousal and child abuse, tweeted at Biden: “It happened because of this sort of BS rhetoric from you & the rest of your party. It’s sickening. It needs to stop.”
At this point, there was not yet any indication the shooter had been influenced by anything any politician had stated.
J.D. Vance, the ultra-thirsty Republican senator from Ohio who is angling to be Trump’s veep pick and who once compared Trump to Hitler, said the same: “Today is not just some isolated incident. 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.”On CNN, GOP consultant Scott Jennings remarked, “The rhetoric around him over the last few weeks, that if he wins an election our country will end, our democracy will end, it’s the last election our we’ll ever have. These things have consequences.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) quickly proclaimed that Biden “is responsible” for the shooting. She then went further than blaming the Ds for their anti-Trump rhetoric and retweeted a post from a MAGA activist who explicitly accused the Democrats of being behind the shooting: “The Dems realized it’s too late to switch out their candidate so they attempted to kill ours instead.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene voiced the same dastardly message: “Democrats wanted this to happen. They’ve wanted Trump gone for years and they’re prepared to do anything to make that happen.” Greene’s remark suggested the Democrats were somehow involved in this attempted assassination.
No shocker, the Kremlin chimed in and echoed the MAGA talking points, saying the Biden administration had created the “atmosphere around candidate Trump” that “provoked” the shooting.
These comments from the Republicans and MAGA extremists were reckless and absurd. For years, Trump has been pushing an ugly narrative: Joe Biden and the Democrats are in league with antifa, Black radicals, and communists to destroy the nation. Trump has said this zillions of times. In both the 2020 and 2024 campaigns, he has exclaimed that if Biden is elected “we may not have a country anymore.” He has repeatedly preached an apocalyptic sermon casting his political rivals as bent on annihilating the United States. He has depicted Biden and his allies as an existential threat to America.
And, of course, Trump has repeatedly encouraged violence—most infamously on January 6. But with this shooting his MAGA allies quickly spotted an opportunity for a rubber-glue propaganda campaign to characterize the Dems as the true threat to democracy and civility and concoct a massive deflection. One of Biden’s chief lines of attack on Trump is that he presents a danger to the republic. Now the Trump crew had a chance to turn the tables and they eagerly grabbed it. Ultimately, the MAGA crowd doesn’t have to win the argument that Biden endangers democracy. They merely need to use it to muddy the waters and undercut the Democrats’ main case against Trump.
There was other ridiculousness from the right. Dave Rubin, a conservative commentator, tweeted, “Assuming it turns out to be true that this sick fuck was an Antifa member, Antifa should be labeled a terrorist organization immediately. And that should’ve happened years ago, actually.” And Elon Musk, who after the shooting issued a full-throated endorsement of Trump, responded, “Absolutely.” When it turned out, the alleged shooter was a Republican, neither called for labelling the GOP a terrorist outfit (as liberal commentator Keith Olbermann noted.)
As did many, Marco Rubio brought God into this, asserting the Almighty had “protected” Trump.
Naturally, this led many on X to wonder why God had not done anything to protect the rally attendee who was killed—or Abraham Lincoln.
On Sunday morning, Ed Martin, a stalwart MAGA-ite who leads a right-wing outfit called Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and who is deputy policy director for the GOP’s platform committee, issued a bizarre social media post claiming “Big Government, Big Tech and Big Media and the Democrat party are trying to rewrite the narrative” by not describing the shooting as an assassination attempt. Yet the chyrons on all the major news networks plainly labeled this event as such. Martin was promoting some crazy conspiracy theory about what he called the #Narrative Machine. (Yes, this man is involved in crafting policy for the Republican Party.)
The attempted assassination of Trump was a horrific event that claimed the life of one person and further traumatized American politics. It also triggered a flood of bullshit. The MAGA world rushed to take advantage of the shooting to remake Trump, who has essentially condoned political violence by vowing to pardon January 6 rioters, into a martyr of political violence and to portray Democrats as the perpetrators of such violence. It is a foul act but a true reflection of the black-is-white reality-denialism of Trump and and his MAGA following.
The cause of this tragic shooting has yet to be determined. But one thing is certain: Only one of the candidates in the 2024 contest incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to overturn an election and still threatens American democracy. What happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, does not change that.
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- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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