The attempted assassination of Donald Trump doesn't change the fact that he is a threat to democracy

At 6:11:13 pm ET Saturday evening, a presidential election unlike any before it, for a host of reasons with which people the world over are all too familiar, was thrown instantly into further disarray by that sadly all-too-familiar report of “shots fired.”

That those tragic shots were fired at a Trump campaign rally, killing one rally attendee, wounding two others and narrowly missing the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, to many are symptomatic of the polarized world in which we find ourselves, a country on the brink, as many have warned – rightly – of the potentially widespread outbreak of political violence. 

We do not know what motivated the would-be assassin, and so should reserve judgment on whether the political climate is wholly, partially or not at all to blame. Recall that the last attempted assassination of a political figure in America – Ronald Reagan – had no political angle to it at all. But, in contrast to 1981, the country is in a very different, and far more febrile, place today.   

While we struggle to find the right words, we must not lose sight of what is at stake in this election, and we must not allow ourselves to be cowed into silence by the voices of hypocrisy that seek to pin the blame for the assassination on efforts by Democrats and the media to pierce through the noise and frame this election as a choice between democracy and autocracy.  

While Donald Trump deserves our sympathy, he does not deserve our vote. David Frum, writing this morning in the Atlantic, captured perfectly the conundrum we face:

“Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.“

We need no reminders of the myriad ways in which Trump has, at the very least, stoked and, at worst, incited political violence, to the point where it was fair to say that political violence had become a feature of the Trump brand. 

If we do need reminders, we can start, and stop, with his actions leading up to and on January 6^th or with Trump’s continued embrace and glorification on the campaign trail of the insurrections who were convicted or pleaded guilty for their violent actions at the Capitol. (Cast your mind back to the mystery over the behavior that day in the SUV on the Ellipse and then consider the difficulty the Secret Service protective detail had getting Trump off the stage.) 

Or with Charlottesville. Or the comment directed to the Proud Boys, “Stand back and stand by.” Or the references to migrants “poisoning the blood of the country,” or to his threat to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” Or to a “bloodbath.”    

We need no reminders of the reactions of the Republican ecosystem to the attack on Paul Pelosi. We need no reminders of the embrace of Kyle Rittenhouse. We need no reminders that few have called out the election deniers in their midst, including the denier-in-chief.    

Where was the outcry in April when Kari Lake, running for the Senate from Arizona, warned supporters at a rally that the election would be intense, concluding with a reference to “strapping on a Glock” or when Senator Tom Cotton tweeted, “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way”? Only a few weeks before, Trump shared an image on social media depicting President Joe Biden hog-tied in the back of a pick-up truck. I don’t recall an outcry then either.

Where was the outcry over the threats to public health officials or to election administrators, election officials and the media? Where was the outcry over the plot to kidnap and execute Governor Whitmer? Where was the outcry over a campaign animated by revenge and retribution against political enemies? 

Where is the outcry over the ongoing threat to election administrators and election officials? Where is the outcry over the threat by Project 2025 architect Kevin Robert, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Where is the outcry when Trump’s running mate characterizes Biden campaign statements labelling Trump an “authoritarian fascist” as leading directly to the attempted assassination? 

Add to the hypocrisy around political violence, the deafening silence when it comes to gun violence.  Every time there is a senseless act of violence involving assault weapons (and while it is still too early to know, the broad profile appears to be the same, young, white, male, loner, bullied as a kid, with the right to own a weapon of war), those standing in the way of sensible efforts to reduce gun violence, including Trump, recoil at any attempt to address the underlying issue. This is not the time they will say to seek political advantage based on tragic loss of life. After all, “it is merely a product of mental illness,” they will quickly default to. And while there will likely be a catalogue of operational failures that day by the Secret Service and perhaps local law enforcement, the Secret Service could be tarred with the same accusations levelled at the FBI, DHS and the Department of Justice of being part of the “deep state.”  

So, once again Democrats are on the defensive, but we should not be. Democrats have finally woken up to the threats to democracy posed by Trump and his Project 2025 sycophants and have been calling out Republicans for stoking political violence, but they are now pulling back ads and questioning how to move forward in response to Republican voices blaming Democratic rhetoric for the polarization and climate of political violence. This incidentally is merely an extension of the Trump playbook of accusing President Biden of all the things he, Trump that is, rightly stands accused of.  In what rational world is Joe Biden a threat to democracy – that is a figment of the right’s imagination. 

Historians, social scientists and political scientists have been warning for months that the country is a tinderbox, and it would not take much to inflame that portion of the population that is primed for violence. They have also warned that Trump’s rhetoric, should he win, portends the rein of a strongman, and they have drawn all too alarming parallels between that rhetoric and late 1920s/early 1930s fascism, now potentially aggravated by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. Early comments about a Reichstag fire moment may have overlooked the fact that historians are divided over whether the fire was caused by Nazi agents who framed a communist activist for the act or was as independent act with no involvement by Nazi agents that Hitler quickly exploited. Trump undoubtedly will exploit the iconic images and his calls to fight! fight! fight! of a situation that presented itself in the most tragic of ways.  

We should be thankful Trump survived and should mourn the loss of life. We should be thankful for the agents on Trump’s protective detail who put themselves between an assailant and their protectee. But we should also be thankful Trump is not the President of the United States. Trump may surprise us (as reporting now suggests) and project the image of a healer, of unity – it may be for show, or it may be genuine, the product of a near-death experience, and a more impactful one than the one he faced when he was rushed to Walter Reed in October 2020 with a corona virus infection that may have been far more severe than the public was led to believe.  

I remain sceptical, particularly after seeing Trump’s post this afternoon on Truth Social calling for the dismissal of all cases against him (“All the Witch Hunts”) and accusing the Department of Justice of coordinating “All” the political attacks, which he characterizes as an “Election Interference conspiracy.”

The country continues its journey in uncharted territory, with no useful reference points by which to be guided. Oh, and the federal judge in the Mar-a-Lago documents case just dismissed the case against Trump on the ground that the Special Counsel was improperly appointed.  

So, where does that leave us?

We should condemn the violence that was unleashed in Butler, PA just as we must continue to condemn the violence that targets people in elementary schools, churches, temples, synagogues, grocery stores, bars and night clubs, and at concerts and parades. We should not allow those who stand proudly in the way of reducing the gun-related carnage on our streets and in our communities to cow us into silence.  We must not lose sight of the threat that Trump, the architects of Project 2025 and the MAGA Republican leadership pose to democracy, and we must stand firm in opposing their efforts to destroy democracy. In that sense, nothing changed on Saturday. 

Mark Bergman seeks to capitalize on a series of networks he has developed while based in London for two decades and more recently in Washington, D.C. He convenes and connects constituencies and has established himself as a thought leader on political, geopolitical and regulatory developments and trends, with a particular emphasis on the resilience of democracy; extremism/disinformation/weaponization of hate; transnational repression and kleptocracy; and climate change. His written analyses – as part of his briefing notes series — are available on his website: 7Pillars Global Insights. 

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