This week, a would-be assassin aimed a rifle at Donald Trump through the fence at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Secret Service saw the man and shot at him; he was later arrested. The alleged shooter has a long record of clear-cut, left-wing hatred: He has opined that Trump ought to be killed by Iran, he has only donated to Democrats since 2019, and his truck sports a Biden/Harris bumper sticker.
This makes the second assassination attempt on Trump in two months. Trump has now been subjected to as many near-shootings during that period as Kamala Harris has solo interviews.
Why?
The answer is obvious: America is a large country, with a large number of unstable people. Overheated rhetoric generally appeals to the unhinged; the unhinged may take seriously that rhetoric and attempt violence as a consequence. That doesn't mean that those who spout such rhetoric are criminally responsible for the actions of the violent. It does mean that when the temperature is raised on the political stove, it becomes more predictable for the pot to boil over.
We have now been subjected to a full decade of talk about how Donald Trump is a full-scale threat to the American republic. President Joe Biden has given speeches labeling Trump a danger to the soul of democracy. Vice President Kamala Harris has said that the very fabric of our country is at stake. Trump has been compared to Adolf Hitler more often than any public figure of our lifetime. Is it an enormous shock that someone with mental issues might think that taking a shot at Trump would be justified -- heroic, even?
It's certainly true that overheated rhetoric exists on all sides of the political aisle these days. In understanding just why Trump has been subjected to two separate assassination attempts in eight weeks, it isn't enough just to blame violent rhetoric, though. Opponents of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris generally disdain them; they understand that neither Biden nor Harris are historic figures, indispensable to the movements they supposedly lead. In fact, there is a baseline understanding that the Democratic Party could easily switch Biden or Harris for a dozen others and that their preferred issue set would maintain apace.
The same is not true for Trump. The media and Democratic Party have determined that Trump is a singularly indispensable figure -- a sort of bizarre cult leader, who has mesmerized millions into submission. They believe, in fact, that absent Trump, the Americans who vote for him would revert to becoming good little Democrats -- reasonable people. That lie springs from a deeper lie: the lie that human beings are inherently good (by which they mean liberal) and that they only think differently if they are bamboozled by a strongman. Dispense with the strongman, and all will be well.
The problem here is larger than hatred for Trump. It is a perverse view that those who dissent from Democratic Party politics are themselves zombies in thrall to a madman, rather than fellow Americans who disagree on key issues for good reasons of their own.
And so the assassination attempts will likely continue. Trump has dodged a bullet once and avoided a shooting a second time. Americans ought never be asked to experience a third attempt. If, God forbid, something does happen to Trump, the results for the country will be catastrophic.