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| Donald Trump slaps at his ear seconds after shots rang out (CNN) |
After being the target in what authorities have described as an "assassination attempt" -- even though we have cited a cargo-ship full of reasons to question if that is what really happened on Saturday in Butler, PA -- Donald Trump reportedly was going to rewrite his speech for this week's Republican National Convention to send a "unifying" message to Americans. That does not sound like something Trump would do, and as it turns out, it wasn't. In fact, the idea blew up before it could even get started. How did that happen?
Under the headline "Trump’s Ugly New Post-Shooting Rant Instantly Wrecks His “Unity” Pivot; Donald Trump’s idea of unity: Everybody just needs to unify around putting him above the law. The media must resist getting played by his scam," Greg Sargent, of The New Republic (TNR) explains:
In the wake of the horrific attempt to shoot Donald Trump, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Axios reported Monday that advisers close to the former president say he “plans to seize his moment by toning down his Trumpiness” and by “dialing up efforts to unite a tinder-box America.”
Because Trump has suddenly stared death in the face, the report suggested, he has attained benevolence toward his political foes, which will manifest itself at this week’s GOP convention with a “unifying” display. As Tucker Carlson told Axios: “Getting shot changes a man.”
Tell that to Trump himself. Only a few hours after that report appeared, Trump uncorked a new rant on Truth Social that left zero doubt that he remains fully committed to the range of positions that make Trump and his movement such a profound threat to democratic stability in this country—the very same ones that have done so much to bring about the “tinder box” that Axios imagines he is now preoccupied with addressing.
This led some to chortle that media predictions of a Trump “pivot”—a stock joke at this point—have imploded yet again. But it should occasion something else too. If media figures are so eager to depict Trump as unifying, then let’s lay down a hard metric: Before such claims are made, the absolute minimum threshold he must clear is fully renouncing the authoritarian designs he is threatening to inflict on this country and its people if re-elected president.
Needless to say, that’s not going to happen.
What is going to happen? We will get more Trump being Trump, with everything he says and does filtered through a lens that is designed to help only him, and no one else. That is what it's like to have a leader who is a malignant narcissist. How did Trump's self-centeredness become apparent before he could get his "unity" message off the ground? Sargent helps us understand by quoting Trump's exact words from his social-media account:
Here’s Trump’s full rant:
As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!
How horrific was the shooting for Trump? Well, he got out of it with what appeared to be a scratch on his ear, one that apparently required no on-site treatment. After all, the alleged shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20 was found dead, with an AR-15 rifle by his side. Our research indicates AR-15s are known for producing wounds that are a bit more serious than an ear scratch -- one that might or might not even require a bandage. In short, AR-15s "blow apart skulls" and "can eviscerate several people in seconds." Yet Trump walked away with a scratch on his ear?
Trump apparently told authorities that a bullet pierced his ear and caused the scratch. If that was the case, Trump almost certainly was not shot by Thomas Matthew Crooks because he was found dead with an AR-15 beside him. A bullet from such a weapon would not have left a scratch on Trump's ear; it likely would have blown his head off, with injuries Trump could not have survived., So, who caused Trump's injury? It almost certainly was not Tom Crooks. Evidence we've seen so far shows it's possible no one shot at Trump. Three other people were shot, and one (a former fire chief) died while draping himself over his family, trying to protect them. Two unidentified people were shot and now are listed in stable condition. The injuries to the three people who were shot have not been publicly described. But being in stable condition, suggests two of them likely were not shot by Crooks with an AR-15, because they probably would not have survived this long with a wound from such a weapon. Clearly, an honest investigation will be needed to sort out what happened, and our guess is that someone's story will start falling apart quickly.
Sargent has carefully examined the exact words from Trump's social-media post (highlighted in blue above), and he finds them filled with contradictions:
Note that Trump is positioning himself as a “Uniting” figure (when he capitalizes words, you know he’s branding himself) while also reiterating that every single legal proceeding he faces is entirely illegitimate. And note especially his evocation of “the January 6th Hoax,” which really means that Trump remains fully committed to pardoning the January 6 rioters—and to canceling the ongoing prosecution of himself for insurrection-related crimes.
Those positions are irredeemably incompatible with any stated goal of unifying the country, at a very fundamental level. They embody the notion that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with trying to cling to power illegitimately, through violent means, in defiance of the votes and political aspirations of a majority of his fellow Americans. They also embody the idea that he and his movement should not be subject to the same laws that the rest of us are. Trump is telegraphing that he won’t back off any of that in the slightest.
The effort to assassinate Trump was an abomination and the enemy of the rule of law. Yet it’s also true that Republicans are cynically trying to exploit the shooting: Many have blamed it on the message from Democrats that Trump poses a fundamental threat to democracy, self-rule, and the American experiment, claiming this incited the shooting. Clearly, as Brian Beutler aptly notes, the game is to remove from the political agenda something that’s both true and politically damaging to Trump: that he actually does threaten all those things.
Worse, Trump advisers plainly want journalists to accept the premise in his tweet-rant: that the real threat to national stability is the continued effort to hold Trump and his movement accountable for their crimes against democracy; that moving past all these crimes—which Trump would do by voiding all of them, including his own—is itself the true precondition for achieving national healing.
There are signs this scam may have a bit of success. First, some media coverage is already slipping into a subtle fallacy. The GOP argument right now is that Democrats are depicting Trump as an existential threat to the country and this inspired the shooting. It’s not lost on news organizations that Trump too constantly depicts Democrats in similar terms: He regularly says that electing them will mean “we won’t have a country” and that a Democratic victory will only be achieved via illegitimate means. News accounts have been pointing out that both sides offer a version of this message about the other.
The challenge in all of this, Sargent seems to be saying, is that Trump and his allies cannot be trusted; they simply refuse to follow the fundamental concepts of fair play. Sargent writes:
These accounts often don’t make it clear that in making this charge, only one side—the Democrats—is doing so while remaining broadly faithful to what the facts actually do dictate. Indeed, Democrats are remaining faithful to what Trump and his allies are saying in their own words. Trump has not just vowed to pardon the insurrectionists and treat ongoing prosecutions of himself as a dead letter but also has refused to say he’ll accept the results of the election and has vowed to prosecute his opponents without cause, even as his allies promise to ferociously unleash the state on designated enemies of MAGA.
News accounts should make it clear that it actually is not beyond the pale for Democrats to charge that Trump poses a foundational threat to republican governance. Nor is it beyond the pale to charge that MAGA is the only major faction in American life that valorizes political violence and sees its utilization in service of Trump and his goals as good. After all, this is precisely what it means to vow to pardon the January 6 rioters and to perpetually hail them as patriots and heroes. A media failure to clarify all this will help him pose as a post-shooting unifier.
What’s more, as the Axios story suggests, the idea that Trump is pivoting to “unity” will be very hard for some media figures to resist. Taking note of this temptation, Tim Miller joked: “Can we wait to actually see some evidence before declaring him Mandela now?”
Really good byline, Roger!
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