Dem
49
GOP
51
Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment of Politics was: "Thou shalt not attack fellow Republicans." The Gipper never got around to a Twelfth Commandment, but if he had, it might well have been "Thou shalt not let a perfectly good assassination attempt go to waste."
St. Ronnie, of course, really and truly had his life threatened by an assassin's bullet(s) in 1981. If things had been a little different, he might not have survived. Still, he handled the whole thing extremely well, up to and including making jokes with the surgeons as he was wheeled into the OR. The bravery he showed certainly did not hurt his public image.
During and after the first assassination attempt, Donald Trump was never in anything close to the danger that Reagan was. Some danger, of course, in that a bullet did hit him, and if that bullet had been an inch to the right, things would have been different. But nothing close to what #40 experienced. This did not stop Trump from trying mightily to capitalize on what happened, naturally, from the fist-up photo, to the bandaged ear at the Republican Convention, to the commemorative shoes sold for a mere $299 a pair.
This weekend's assassination attempt was considerably less a threat to Trump than the first one. It's now been confirmed that the shooter did not fire any shots, and that he didn't come anywhere near Trump before being forced to flee. So, no cool photo and no ear bandage. Presumably no commemorative shoes, though you never know. Maybe some they'll-keep-you-safe-from-assassins golf cleats?
In any event, Trump is not going to let the fact that he was not injured and was not in danger stop him from trying to cash in on what happened. Within hours of the news breaking, the Trump campaign had posted a fundraising pitch on its website:
This was supplemented by at least three fundraising e-mails, sent out in rapid succession.
Beyond that, Trump really wants to find an enemy/scapegoat that he can use to get people into a lather. The shooter was all over the place, politically, having supported Trump in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Vivek Ramaswamy in 2024. He was also kinda whackadoodle; for example, he promised to lead a private army of thousands of volunteers to fight in Ukraine (didn't happen, of course). In any case, it's not quite gonna fly to paint him as a Democrat-gone-wild.
What IS possible, or at least the Republicans think so, is to blame the actions of shooter #2 on "extreme" Democratic rhetoric. Speaking to one of the many sycophants on Fox yesterday, Trump decreed: "Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country—both from the inside and out." Trump running mate/lap dog J.D. Vance immediately picked up on the claim du jour, agreeing: "The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that... no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I'd say that's pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out." Quite a few other Republicans (basically, the usual suspects) adopted this line of attack, as well.
The careful reader will notice that, in attacking the Democrats for their inflammatory rhetoric, Trump & Co. used plenty of... inflammatory rhetoric. This is when Trump wasn't busy posting "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT" to "Truth" social, or when Trump and Vance weren't busy doubling and tripling down on their claims that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating cats and dogs.
We are passing this along because keeping track of the latest developments in the presidential campaign is what we do. However, we find it very difficult to believe that anyone is going to buy this nonsense, outside of the MAGA faithful. We suspect that anyone and everyone else, perhaps even including some of the MAGA faithful, is going to notice that: (1) this is a painfully obvious case of "Do as I say, not as I do," and/or that (2) Trump, Vance, etc. are basically telling the Democrats they can't campaign against Trump and Vance.
That said, the assassination attempt might indeed have an impact, just not the one that Trump '24 is trying to manufacture. The members of Congress are now squabbling about whether to increase the budget for the Secret Service (perhaps temporarily, for the campaign season, and perhaps permanently). And in the topsy-turvy world of modern politics, it is Democrats who want to increase funding, while Republicans—in many cases, the same Republicans crying crocodile tears about the threats to Trump's life—are pooh-poohing the possibility. In case the budget fight wasn't already messy enough, there's now another dimension. As a reminder, the government will shut down in 13 days if there is not, at very least, a stopgap bill. (Z)