I’m in a chat group with a few Deplorables, a couple of whom are gun nuts. I’ve been trying to get some of my software expert witness work done before EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) and thus was in the middle of a real-time work session when the Trump shooting occurred. I ]wasn’t paying close attention to the chat group, for which I get alerts, or the news, for which I don’t get alerts. During a short break in the work, during which I scanned the gun nuts’ exchange, I responded with the following:
I haven’t checked the news, but let me guess: all of the people who said that Donald Trump would end our democracy (i.e., destroy the U.S. as we know it), kill Americans who identify as “pregnant people” by denying them abortion care, kill Americans by refusing to order masks, school closures, and lockdowns next time a respiratory virus comes through, etc. are now saying that it is reprehensible that someone would try to preserve American democracy and American lives by killing the one big threat to both.
As soon as work was done, I checked Twitter. I refreshed my memory by sampling some Democrat thought-leadership… According to “the big guy”, we could “lose everything”, including our democracy, if anyone votes for Donald Trump:
Joe Biden hadn’t changed his mind (such as it is) as of last month:
Also, from June 28 (screen shot in case this gets memory-holed):
How does Joe Biden feel about the failure of the rifleman to neutralize the dire/genuine threat to our democracy that he identified and, therefore, the continued realistic possibility that we will soon “lose everything”? Joe Biden is “grateful” and “praying for [Donald Trump]” (i.e., praying that Americans continue to be threatened):
Let’s check the New York Times. “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” (NYT, December 16, 2016) answers the question in the affirmative. Here’s the worst part:
There are signs that Mr. Trump seeks to diminish the news media’s traditional role by using Twitter, video messages and public rallies to circumvent the White House press corps and communicate directly with voters…
Also, Trump would seek to imprison the political opposition:
An even more basic norm under threat today is the idea of legitimate opposition. … Governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism.
The idea of legitimate opposition has been entrenched in the United States since the early 19th century, disrupted only by the Civil War. That may now be changing, however, as right-wing extremists increasingly question the legitimacy of their liberal rivals. …
Such extremism, once confined to the political fringes, has now moved into the mainstream. … Mr. Trump’s campaign centered on the claim that Hillary Clinton was a criminal who should be in jail; and “Lock her up!” was chanted at the Republican National Convention. In other words, leading Republicans — including the president-elect — endorsed the view that the Democratic candidate was not a legitimate rival.
Did the newspaper of record’s opinion change over the intervening 8 years? No. Just two days ago, the NYT said that Trump was “Dangerous in Word, Deed, and Action”:
(How is this dark NYT image different from Catherine the Great wondering if there was any chance that her 34-year-old husband, Peter III, might develop a fatal health condition while in prison? Or Henry II’s “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”)
The clear thinkers at the NYT have been warning us for at least 8 years about the dangers of Donald Trump being anywhere near the levers of power. What do they now say? “The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America”:
It is a mercy that Donald Trump was not seriously injured by gunfire at an evening campaign rally … We hope that Mr. Trump recovers quickly and fully.
They want the person whom they said would end American democracy to “recover quickly and fully”? They don’t at least hope he’ll be incapacitated through November 5, 2024?
Given all of the above, I rate my prediction in the chat group exchange as TRUE.
Readers: Have you found any examples of a righteous person admitting that there is at least an apparent logical contradiction between his/her/zir/their previous vilification and expressed fear of Donald Trump and current expressed hope that Donald Trump be preserved from any future harm?
(Personally, I do hope that our fellow Palm Beach County taxpayer Donald Trump recovers completely. And I have to say that I’m impressed by his apparent sangfroid. How many among us can say that our courage has been tested with an actual shooting? But my well-wishing isn’t a logical contradiction because I did not previously express an opinion that Mr. Trump was dangerous, a threat, or likely to end American democracy. (I did say that I preferred both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis as candidates, but not that I expected or demanded everyone else in America to agree with me.))
Related:
- Mar-a-Lago and the Palm Event (from March 2024; “The most hated man in America appeared midway through the event to welcome the guests, praise the organization, praise the musical and theatrical talent, etc. Donald Trump was gracious and did not mention politics nor did he talk about himself. He had no teleprompter.”)
Update: Let’s also check out Kamala Harris. Last month, “[Donald Trump] is a threat to our democracy and our fundamental freedoms.”
Four days ago, “wants to turn our democracy into a dictatorship”:
This evening, “praying for Donald Trump” and “relieved” that the pathway to dictatorship for the U.S. is still available:
.. and the Washington Post:
But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.
How about this evening?
Thankfully, Donald Trump is reported to be “fine” after an apparent attempt on his life
(They’re happy that the person they called Hitler With a Golf Cart Instead of a Volkswagen is hale and hearty.)
The New Republic should get an award for clarity. I’m going to leave this “Trump = Hitler” cover as a placeholder to see if the progressive magazine comes up with a paired “We’re sorry that the latter-day Claus von Stauffenberg did not kill Hitler” story:
We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.
I will have a lot more respect for The New Republic if they say that they’re sad the modern Claus von Stauffenberg wasn’t more successful than the original Claus von Stauffenberg.
Monday update: It seems that The New Republic is slower than other progressive Democrat media outlets, but not more logically consistent. “Trump Assassination Horror: “America Is Not Ready For What Comes Next” (July 15, 2024):
After the despicable attempt to kill Trump, a reporter who writes regularly about political violence explains how deeply unprepared we are for the terrible escalation that may now be coming. … At the time of this recording, we know little about the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. He was hit in the ear, but thankfully doesn’t appear seriously injured.
It’s “despicable” to kill a person whom they said was a defrosted Hitler and they are thankful that Hitler wasn’t seriously injured. I sampled the podcast and the main issue, it seems, is violence perpetrated by Republicans. So just maybe the magazine’s position can be considered consistent with the Hitler cover. They’re thankful that Trump wasn’t more seriously injured because a serious injury would be more likely to result in violence against noble Democrats, not because they they want Trump to be alive and well. And the shooter was “despicable” because his action could have resulted in violence against noble/precious Democrats.
I’m not a Tucker Carlson fan, but I discovered “Tucker Carlson stokes conspiracies, claims U.S. is ‘speeding towards’ assassination of Trump” (NBC) from September 1, 2023:
“If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, now you go to indictment and none of them work. What’s next? Graph it out, man. We’re speeding towards assassination, obviously. … They have decided — permanent Washington, both parties have decided — that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have him,” Carlson said in the interview, which was posted online Wednesday.
In far-right and conspiratorial circles, Trump has long been presented as the target of a vast plot orchestrated in part by Washington’s “deep state” as well as the Democratic establishment and the news media. The former president has embraced this worldview, referring to himself as a “victim” and the center of a “witch hunt.”
NBC reassured readers that this theory was “presented without evidence” and only someone gullible enough to believe a conspiracy theory would consider the possibility of an attack on literal Hitler.
The New York Post shows us the threat with which the $3 billion/year Secret Service was confronted:
Is it fair to say that the Biden administration’s Secret Service is at least as effective as the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security, responsible for securing the border?
While watching the conversation online, and seeing Trump supporters recycle these quotes, should I assume they don’t remember when Trump said “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore”, and a bunch of his fans (carrying Trump flags!) knocked over police and charged into the capitol to hang Mike Pence?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55640437
Extra kicker: Trump sat in front the TV, refusing to call in the police or call off his fans.
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/28/mike-pence-trump-jan6-hearing
Can we imagine Biden delaying the secret service so the shooter could have time to take more shots?
David: your comment is not related to the original topic, which is people who expressed wishes that someone would live longer are difficult to understand in the context of their previous statements that the same person’s continued existence is a threat to democracy, the entire planet, American lives, “everything” that Americans value, etc.
If you bring us examples of Venezuelan conservatives elaborately wishing that Hugo Chavez could be cured of cancer (which killed him at 58), that could be an analogous situation (though I am not aware of anyone saying the Hugo Chavez would destroy Planet Earth via climate change).
Philip — I’ll take your point that it didn’t exactly answer your question.
But that’s because it’s would be easy to understand this issue in another context.
Suppose someone said “I want all criminals prosecuted, but it’s outrageous when police plant evidence to convict people they’re confident is guilty of something, but can’t prove it.”
This is effectively saying: Playing within the rules is important.
It comes from people believing that fighting at the ballot box can help democracy, but shooting them can lead to civil war.
When you talk about people wanting Trump to “live longer”, I actually don’t think that’s the point you made earlier. Did I miss it?
It’s completely compatible to say
– The world would be a better place if he died peacefully in his sleep
– The world would be a worse place if someone murdered him
If we woke up tomorrow morning and found that Trump and Biden both died peacefully in their sleep tonight of natural causes, how many Americans would breath a sign of relief?
David: “Playing within the rules” might be important in the context of a “normal Republican” running against a virtuous Democrat. However, we have been informed for 8+ years that Donald Trump is not a normal Republican and that he represents a threat to America and Americans that is unprecedented. Thus, there is no reason for rules to apply since those rules were developed without knowledge of anything unprecedented occurring.
Philip — You asked for an explanation, and you seen unsatisfied with mine. That’s fair.
What do you think is a better explanation for what we’re seeing from Democrats?
Do you think they want violence, and speaking out against it is just an act?
David: My general theory is that as government gets bigger the stakes are higher and that makes people more passionate. In Singapore, government is less than 20 percent of GDP so a question of what government should do is an argument about less than 1/5th of one’s income. In the U.S., government is now more than half of the GDP (if we include the totally government-controlled health care segment) so the argument is about what happens to 1/2 of one’s income.
Speaking of acrimony, here’s what Democrats are up to with Donald Trump barely out of urgent care: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/us/politics/biden-speech-detroit.html
The president’s defiance, and the crowd’s enthusiastic response, helped give the Biden event at a Detroit high school gym the flavor of a Trump rally at times. When Mr. Biden referred to his political opponent, there were chants of “Lock him up” — which the president did not discourage. When he criticized news media coverage, big cheers followed, with his supporters turning to boo and point fingers at reporters.
Mr. Biden thundered that his rival was a “convicted criminal” and a “business fraud,” and said that he had “raped” the writer E. Jean Carroll, whom Mr. Trump was found liable of sexually abusing by a civil court.
At the Detroit event, the members of the crowd positioned behind Mr. Biden, and in view of the television cameras, were overwhelmingly Black, while the rest of the crowd was heavily white. As his political standing in Washington has teetered, his strongest statements of support have come from members of the Congressional Black Caucus. On Friday night in Detroit, he spoke of participating in the civil rights movement as a young man.
[If you ain’t Black you ain’t sitting behind Genocide Joe?]
Philip — That speech was from two days ago, before the violence:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/us/politics/biden-speech-detroit.html
Here is Joe’s speech today:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-oval-office-address-sunday-evening-trump-shooting-rcna161790
(Did he at least get names right today? I can’t stand to watch.)
By the way, shouldn’t it be hard to judge Biden as worse than Trump when the crowd was mocking Trump _with Trump’s own words_, words he meant in all seriousness?
Oops. My mistake. Somehow it popped up at the top of my feed from the NYT.
Chatgpt is pretty good at creating praying for trump tweets. It’ll be good for Nvidia if Bide wins.
After a certain age, lions know when heavenly mother is helping them out & that was definitely a case of heavenly mother helping someone out. He didn’t have to turn his head less than a second before the shot. It was headed between his eyes. Whoever took the bullet behind him was a hero. It would be logically contradicting if that sacrifice was for nothing, come election time.
Joe Biden’s twitter posted this last week, then deleted it today:
> I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to do it. So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.
It’s hard to see how “put Trump in a bullseye” is ever a good thing to say.
Especially when one has the charm and charisma that Joe Biden possesses. When he throws state-wide rallies, literally dozens of people will come to hear him speak.
Can you imagine how many 20-yo men in this country look up to Biden as a role model and hang on his every word? Must be like 5 or 6.
It was just a matter of time before one of them took his words a little too literally.
David, how many secret service agents follow Biden, given that they are majority of Biden rallies attendees under age 40? And given that Biden is their ultimate boss.
David: The comment about wanting Trump in a bullseye and, then, a week later, praying for Trump’s continued existence and health is related to the original post. The question of whether anyone would be influenced by Joe Biden’s tweets is not relevant to the original post..
(Corporate media did blame the January 2011 shooting of Gabriel Giffords on crosshairs in a March 2010 ad from a political action committee associated with Republican Sarah Palin. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting )
Philip — I was responding to the comment from “Alex Jones was right”.
When he gave that Biden quote, I assume his point was:
– Biden was speaking in a way that would incite violence
– By deleting it, he realized it was wrong.
Of course, this is the dominant view raging on right-wing media today, so it deserves some discussion.
But something about that explanation doesn’t seem right in this case
Things we know about the shooter
– He’s a 20-yo white guy from a rural area(?)
– He registered as a Republican when he was 18
– It appears he was heavily into guns, and maybe was wearing a gun club t-shirt when killed
If I just told you that but didn’t tell you who he shot, what prediction would you make?
When you have someone pushed to violence, it’s usually down one of two paths
1) Hero worship. Remember the Trump super-fan who sent bombs to Trump’s opponents? Remember his van?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/van-connected-pipe-bomb-suspect-covered-pro-trump-images-stickers-n924906
Remember the Jan 6th people who waved Trump flags instead of American flags as they stormed into the capital?
2) Or people who have been poisoned long-term by propaganda.
Do you think this 20-yo guy was drawn in by years of arguments being made by the ladies on MSNBC? Was he devouring his issue of The Atlantic each week?
I’m eager to hear more about him, but to my eyes, this doesn’t look like “Biden’s rhetoric drove him to this” is the best explanation, but I’m open to be proven wrong. If we find his bedroom covered with shirtless Biden posters, I’ll take it all back.
David: As a non-young non-gun person I can’t even begin to speculate on what this person’s motivation might have been. He lived in a suburb dominated by Democrats and had recently finished high school there, so I guess it is possible that he was influenced by prevailing Democrat philosophy, including that Donald Trump represented a serious threat to Americans and humankind in general (via Trump-caused climate change). If he simply took statements by Democrats and their media allies at face value it wouldn’t have required a leap of logic for him to conclude that he would be considered a hero if he killed Donald Trump.
David, “He registered as a Republican when he was 18”
He also donated to ActBlue, a political action committee that funds left in general and Democratic politicians, to its Progressive Turnout Project.
He probably wanted to make a difference, not necessary good, in Republican policy. In that general are dead forever 85-year old Democrat politician landslide election in 2022. Totally useless to vote in Democrat primary there. “A legendary legislator in the Pennsylvania House won re-election in a landslide despite the fact he’s dead.” https://www.insideedition.com/pennsylvania-democrat-wins-state-seat-despite-dying-a-month-ago-77963
perplexed: That’s a good point. In a closed primary state such as Pennsylvania a person might register with the party that he/she/ze/they opposes just in order to harm them by always voting for the most extreme candidate within that party. A mostly peaceful member of antifa, for example, could register Republican and then vote for Ron DeSantis, secure in the knowledge that the majority of Americans, drunk on the idea of a bigger government, would never vote for DeSantis and his smaller government platform in a general election
Perplexed — I’m eager to hear more about the shooter, because he’s not yet fitting the profile coming from the right wing.
For example, there’s the guy who shot up the Republican baseball game a while back. He was a 66-year-old super left-wing guy. Bernie supporter. Constantly posting on social media about political topics. Probably watched several hours of left-wing media every day. Finally snapped and shot up the game.
https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2020-06/Hodgkinson.pdf
Or the guy who shot Regan: He was a crazy person who wanted to impress Jodie Foster by killing someone famous!
And the Jan 6th people: Trump super-fans who hang on his every word.
The Florida guy with the Trump van: another super-fan who wanted to kill his papa’s enemies.
But in this case
– Biden has exactly 0 super-fans
– Young high-school educated white men aren’t the core Democrat demographic
– The shooter hit Trump’s ear from 400-500 feet away with a weapon not meant for long-range fire, which means he was likely a serious gun fan.
– He registered as a Republican at 18.
Seems like an uncommon profile for a left-wing shooter, right?
On the donation issue: https://x.com/acnewsitics/status/1812543831889313897
Are we sure he was the one who donated?
I’m also seeing stories where he was described as a loner, someone who was bullied a lot.
This makes him sound more like a school shooter profile.
Those school shooters typically feel neglected, ignored, and they want to inflict damage on those who treated them wrong. They’re angry because women ignore them or laugh at them, so they plan to charge into the school to show them who has the power, to leave a “they’ll remember me now” message on the way out.
I’m not saying I know what motivated this guy, but if I were a right-wing politician, I wouldn’t make statement like this:
https://x.com/JDVance1/status/1812280973628965109
… because there’s a decent chance this guy shot at Trump to impress Jodie Foster.
The shooter was wearing a shirt from this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@DemolitionRanch
The owner: https://www.instagram.com/drdemolitionmatt/
Curious to see he’s not posting his pronouns. (I mean… they’s not posting their pronouns)
Why do the non-Deplorables deplore the Trump shooting? Because they are dumb dumbs.
How does Joe Biden feel about the failure of the rifleman to neutralize the dire threat to our democracy that he identified and, therefore, the continued realistic possibility that we will soon “lose everything”? Joe Biden is a vegetable and does not feel anything.
Did the newspaper of record’s opinion change over the intervening 8 years? No. Just two days ago, the NYT said that Trump was “Dangerous in Word, Deed, and Action”: (asked and answered)
How is this dark NYT image different from Catherine the Great wondering if there was any chance that her 34-year-old husband, Peter III, might develop a fatal health condition while in prison? It’s not!
What do they now say? Nothing much!
They want the person whom they said would end American democracy to “recover quickly and fully”? They say they do!
They don’t at least hope he’ll be incapacitated through November 5, 2024? They do!
Have you found any examples of a righteous person admitting that there is at least an apparent logical contradiction between his/her/zir/their previous vilification and expressed fear of Donald Trump and current expressed hope that Donald Trump be preserved from any future harm? Nope!
If violence against politicians is normalized, all politicians will be targets. Neither party wants this.
Meanwhile, this is the best thing that could possibly have happened for Trump. It will rally his base and motivate turnout in the election. And the photo with the blood and the flag and the fist pump will be the way he’s remembered 20 years after he’s dead. I would say it’s an excellent photo by an outstanding photographer, but if you are conspiracy-minded it would be easy to think this is “too perfect” and “proof” that the whole thing was setup — crisis actors, fake injuries, etc. Remember: Trump has been involved with professional wrestling, where performers are known to cut themselves to make themselves bloody; he’s even in the WWE Hall Of Fame.
Why then leading Democrat politicians encouraged violence against Trump using falsehoods mixed with 1930th rhetoric that is appealable to “anti”FA types?
Hello special readers! I know a lot of you have questions about what caused caused Mr. Trump to fall down yesterday, but our wonderful secret service director Kimberly Cheatle will get to the bottom of it. Could it have been a sand bag? Maybe. Kimberly has build a wonderful cadre of secret service agents since becoming leader there. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion have rightly been the centerpiece of her directorship (please see her wonderful videos). Prior to heading the secret service, she directed security for Pepsico, the global snacks and soda company, which often defends itself against radical MAGA supporters. Please pray for Joe as he leads us forward to a brighter future.
There is a lot here to point fingers at Democrats to what happened.
If you listen to democratic news media and talking heads, all that you hear from them is that if Trump wins, our freedom and the planet will die. Abortion: blame it on Trump. Global Warming: blame it on Trump. LGBTQ: blame it on Trump. Religion: blame it on Trump. Wars: blame it on Trump. Even COVID and illegal migrants: blame it on Trump. And the list goes on and on.
Democrats have painted Trump as the next Hitler, and even worse. This *will* incite fear and hater toward Trump and *will* cause someone to flip and attempt to assassinate him to eliminate that fear.
That @David person above seems to be justifying the shooting cos – in a nutshell – ‘orange man very bad’!
They filed a million cases on the guy so he could not run & now trying to get him killed literally.. like wtf is wrong in USA !!
I hope, at least their intelligentsia stops lecturing other countries on ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’. Thanks.
Pres. Biden and his administration are still trying to put Trump in prison for the rest of his life. This cannot be reconciled with all this statements about being for democracy, civilly settling issues at the ballot box, and uniting the nation. Biden is the most anti-democratic president we have ever had.
When House of Representatives is about to start investigating extrimely suspect near-assasination with orcestrated delar response by secret service breaking its own secure perimeter protocol it is time for intended victims to come together per Biden, Democrats and @David and forget what they incited and how they acted up to their operational failure.
Someone up already tried to explain it to you but you’re obviously dense when it comes to logical reasoning and can’t take anything beyond face value. No real surprise here really. But I guess also a symptom of why things like these happen.