Former US president Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening. A bullet grazed his ear before he dropped to the stage and was covered by Secret Service members. The shooter, a registered Republican who made a single donation to a Democratic super PAC in 2021, was killed. A defiant Trump then stood up and refused to get off the stage before raising a fist to a roar of approval from his supporters. The photo of his raised fist after having just been shot will go down in history books.
We are living through the most eventful presidential race in American history. The assassination attempt followed weeks of speculation that Trump’s opponent in the race, President Joe Biden, would drop out and be replaced, on the heels of a disastrous debate performance in which Biden stumbled, lost his train of thought and stared out into space. But as of this weekend, Biden has managed to survive the attempted coup, which was orchestrated by some of his oldest friends – including his erstwhile boss, former president Barack Obama.
Biden and Trump have spoken since the assassination attempt; President Biden condemned the act and all political violence, and his campaign has confirmed it is pulling down all ads.
One wonders what was in those ads that required pulling them down. Surely, ads promoting Biden’s record wouldn’t be seen as inappropriate following an assassination attempt against his opponent. Most likely, they were full of language about democracy itself being on the ballot in 2024 – the Democrats’ constant refrain about the Trump threat since 2016 but especially this election cycle.
The Democrats’ entire pitch to the American people has been something along the lines of, sure, our guy is old, but the other guy is the greatest threat to democracy America has ever faced. Sure, our guy may trail off with a blank stare, but the choice is between the old guy and having a democracy at all. Sure, our guy may have to go to bed at 8pm, but the choice is between Biden and literally fascism. ‘Our very democracy is on the line!’, they tell us every day in the liberal mainstream media. ‘Trump is literally Hitler!’ ‘Never forget “January 6” – that will be every day when Trump is president again!’
It’s hard to see how President Biden continues to campaign against Trump given the events of this weekend. After all, the Democrats chose the message of ‘Trump vs democracy’ because Biden has nothing else to run on. When it comes to the issues Americans list as their most important priorities – immigration, inflation, the economy, jobs, safe cities, a better future for their children – Trump polls at double the support Biden has. Biden only outpolls Trump on abortion and healthcare, and Trump has now neutralised the abortion point by taking the pro-life language out of the GOP agenda. While healthcare is important, it’s hard to see how Biden can build an entire campaign out of it. Needless to say, if those campaign ads were about healthcare, Biden surely wouldn’t have had to pull them.
Projection is at the heart of the Democrats’ messaging. As someone once aptly put it, every accusation by the left is a confession. ‘Trump will jail his political opponents!’, cry the people trying to jail their political opponents. ‘Trump encourages political violence!’, screech the people comparing Trump to Hitler. ‘Trump divides the country!’, shout the people trying to block the most popular candidate from running.
The truth about Trump is rather the opposite of what they claim. The dispossession of working-class Americans by both parties was stemmed under Trump, the first US president to shrink the wealth gap between labour and the elites in 50 years. Trump, the pick of the working man and woman, spoke up for the interests of labour as president, and, in exchange, the elites transferred their contempt for the working class on to Trump, trying to bring him down with lawfare, media hoaxes and constant hyperbole. Now, after the shooting attempt, he has been made into a martyr of a man, someone larger than life, a representation of the will of the people against the power of the institutional elites. When Trump was shot on Saturday evening, in his supporters’ eyes, he became the final embodiment of what he’s been telling them all year: ‘They’re not after me – they’re after you. I’m just in the way.’
Had there not been 91 indictments against him, two impeachments, endless misinformation campaigns and constant comparisons to Hitler, the media would have an easier time casting Trump’s would-be killer as a lone wolf, a troubled twentysomething, a crazy kook with muddled political leanings. But it’s not the shooter people are going to be thinking about for the next five months in the lead up to the presidential election. It’s the man who stood up, undefeated, after being shot on a stage in Pennsylvania, with blood on his cheek and a fist raised to the heavens.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is a spiked columnist and author of Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women.