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Trump Assassination Attempt: A Round-Up

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

The iconic image (CNN, 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]:

And:

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:

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:

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]:

And here is a video of Trump shouting “Fight! Fight!”:

Taleb comments:

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:

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:

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 blots out the sun. 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:

Second, Robert F. Kennedy, Junior:

Third, Melania Trump:

(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. Can anyone truly say that the country faces such a “polarizing” issue today? (Perhaps it should — climate, for example — 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” 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.

[2] The PAC was the Progressive Turnout Project:

Progressive Turnout Project’s email consultant was the cartoonishly evil Mothership Strategies. Mothership Strategies was not on my Bingo card!

[3] Smith 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

[to come]

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.”

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