I’ll take with a grain of salt various assessments that many in the Democratic Party had initially given up on beating Trump in the wake of the assassination attempt against him, and that Democrats should quiet their criticisms of Donald Trump’s authoritarian designs for the country. But even if a variety of damning anonymous quotes weren’t really indicative of a broader collapse of nerve, and with the party rejuvenated now that President Biden has given way to Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s candidate, it’s still worth taking apart facile arguments that Trump’s brush with death has given him superpowers in his quest to become America’s next president — particularly when Trump and the GOP continue to cite Trump’s survival as evidence of his toughness and of divine grace.
One key argument has been that “Trump “was already on track to win and the fact that he is now a victim of political violence rather than the perpetrator,” in words attributed to a Democratic senator’s aide, has been something of a game-changer. But this mentality would grant absolution to a man who himself has steadily encouraged violence against Americans and others since he declared his first presidential run so many years ago, and who among other things incited a violent attack on the US Capitol with the aim of overturning American democracy. In the words of Edward Luce, “No honest accounting of America’s fetid climate can ignore the fact that the former president himself is the country’s most influential exponent of political violence.” For Democrats frozen with worry that Trump has somehow been cleansed of his prior sins, a perspective worth considering is that most Americans may instinctively associate the assassination attempt with the atmosphere of mayhem that Trump himself has done so much to encourage.
Likewise, the idea that the so-called “iconic” images of Trump pumping his fist while his face drips blood have somehow transformed America forever is deeply passive, if not outright bizarre. I don’t think we can assume that American voters’ reaction to such images is going to be, “Wow, that guy looks totally sane and is the sort of person who should be our next president.” I think anyone who already opposes Trump is likelier to be unnerved by the fascistic imagery. Likewise, Trump’s apparent mouthing of the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!” seems about as far from a rational response to almost being killed as one can imagine; reprieved from meeting his maker, Trump’s immediate, gut instinct was to double-down on the violent rhetoric that already alienates so many Americans.
Then there is what the GOP has been omitting in its response: the glaring fact that this was a shooting almost certainly enabled and encouraged by decades of GOP pro-gun rhetoric, which has grown so strident and extreme that it is not unusual for Republican politicians to feature themselves gleefully holding weapons of war in campaign ads and other publicity photos. Setting aside the political dimensions of the shooting, thousands upon thousands of Americans experience what Trump did every year — but not all of them are so lucky as to dodge a bullet or have a government team along to provide counter-sniper fire. Given the Republican voter registration of the shooter, a more critical take might characterize this as an instance of Republican-on-Republican violence made possible by a Republican obsession with semiautomatic weapons and a belief in the necessity of violence to political dominance.
This leads us to the overriding reason why Democrats can’t let themselves get bullied into pulling back from their attacks on Trump: Trump and the GOP have have steadily encouraged and celebrated political violence for many years now, as a key to gaining power and as a weapon to destroy the peaceful contestation of power without which democracy fails. From right-wing mayhem and murder at the Charlottesville Unite the Right event, to the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Donald Trump has unapologetically incited and justified violence against perceived political enemies. Now, the GOP is attempting to fold the assassination attempt into Trump’s fascistic appeal, and it is a sign of our broken media ecosystem that this is not being described as far outside the bounds of normal democratic politics. Democrats absolutely need to counter the GOP’s crazy attacks blaming them for inciting the attempt, because they are right to place the blame for political violence squarely on the GOP, and to defend themselves alongside the necessity of peaceful politics. You will look in vain for a Democrat inciting violence the way that multiple GOP elected officials, including Trump, do. On top of this, the Democratic base is wildly against Trump partly because he is trying to mainstream political violence, and they don’t want that to happen to this country.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, there can be little doubt that the Trumpist GOP will not only continue with its inciting ways, but will now double down with more threat and menace against its “enemies.” We have seen this already, in statements by Senator (and now also vice presidential candidate) J.D. Vance and Texas Governor Greg Abbott accusing the Democrats of sparking the attempt on Trump’s life. If the GOP plan is to accuse Democrats of inciting violence, there is little doubt that this mentality will lead the Republican Party to increase its aggression and menace toward its political adversaries. As Paul Waldman puts it in a sobering assessment of the latent violence flowing through the GOP and the MAGA faithful, “Just as Trump’s supporters have always used the real or imagined excesses of the left to justify their own squalid behavior, they now fantasize about the depths they believe they have permission to sink.”
In light of the party’s increasing appetite for political violence, attempts at the Republican National Convention to paint Donald Trump as a divinely-ordained figure saved from death by the Almighty himself must be seen as particularly audacious and grotesque. If anyone saved Trump’s life, it was the crowd members who first spotted the would-be assassin, and the police who attempted to approach him; these actions quite possibly distracted the shooter sufficiently that he missed his target. Set alongside such farcically hypocritical attempts to depict Trump as a man of unity and holiness, his inevitable appeals to violence (defending the January 6 attack, threatening “retribution” against his “enemies”) provide an opportunity to further highlight the devolution of the GOP into an anti-democratic, authoritarian menace to American democracy and society.
So Democrats must internalize that they need to fight the GOP slander that attempts to make them the offending, violent party. To do so will require their own countervailing aggression — but of a wholly different kind than the violent-minded, mendacious propaganda coming from the Republican camp. It necessarily needs to be an assertiveness that operates within democratic, non-violent norms, limited to rhetoric and political mobilization, but which effectively exposes, denigrates, and delegitimizes the GOP’s violent push against democracy. They must set aside rote instructions from editorial boards, and self-serving demands from GOP politicians, to tone down the political conflict.
The GOP’s reaction to the assassination attempt is only confirming the darkness at the heart of Republican authoritarianism, with grievance and revenge at the center of its politics. The truth is, Democrats must in fact escalate their conflict with the GOP in the name of democracy and the peaceful resolution of differences. They must speak truthfully about the opposition party’s tragic turn against American democracy and its embrace of a retrograde and repressive agenda (from anti-abortion zealotry, to the targeting of minorities for political disempowerment, to threats to gun down peaceful protestors, to an utter indifference to combatting the effects of global warming that are already brutalizing millions of Americans with heat, fire, and flood). They must speak truthfully about how this turn against democracy springs from a toxic stew of white supremacism, religious fundamentalism, misogyny, plutocratic greed, and a correct perception that a majority of Americans opposes its backwards agenda. And of course they must unapologetically advance legislation now that prevents the slaughter of Americans with weapons of war, whether they be a president or a child, welcoming a fight with a GOP that prefers the rights of guns to exist over the rights of humans to do so.
The things that seem to make Trump and the GOP strong — violent threat; unity based on a narrow-minded, hierarchical vision of America; frantic zealotry; cult-like worship of Donald Trump as a king blessed by God — are also what scare the bejesus out of the American majority. Most of us instinctively recoil from violence, from racism, from lockstep politicians who worship a strongman leader, and Democrats need to hit hard against these dubious GOP strengths. Trump, post-assassination attempt, is the same vile and anti-American figure he was before the shooting. In fact, we can assume him to emerge more extreme, more vengeful, and more violent-minded than before — a stance that will be echoed across the Republican Party. Democrats need to be ready to respond to this, and to make the GOP pay a steep electoral price for its war on democracy.