It shouldn’t be news by now but if it is: These people aren’t playing games.
As of this writing, there’s little to say about the assassination attempt against the former president other than thank God he’s reportedly okay and deep condolences to anyone at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania who may have suffered serious injuries.
During a campaign rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, video footage shows Donald Trump being struck by something — a bullet — while shots ring in the background and Secret Service agents huddle to protect the former president. He was ultimately carried off stage while pumping his fist into the air.
As this relates to the election — it certainly does — this was predictable.
Democrats and anti-Trumpers have spent the past three years calling the political opposition a life-or-death threat. They claim they’ll be imprisoned and people will die if their opposition gains power, while they themselves attempt to imprison and now kill the opposition.
They called him a fascist. They called him a dictator. They called him Hitler. Literally the front page of New Republic magazine — still influential in Washington, believe it or not — this month portrayed Trump with a tiny mustache to drive home the point.
The vertigo you’re feeling is normal.
We don’t know yet much about the motives of the shooter. Perhaps he was simply insane, though it’s doubtful. If he turns out to be politically motivated, there’s nothing confusing or inexplicable about this even as news anchors will surely say in the coming days that “we all” bear blame.
We don’t all bear blame. This is one side acting out in fatal violence just as they did through 2020 and just as they did after Trump was elected in 2016. (Don’t forget the Democrat voter who shot up a baseball field of recreating Republicans in 2017, hitting a Congressman and others, because, as he said, he hated Donald Trump.)
After that first debate, after the following weeks — in which Joe Biden assured no Democrat that he’s capable of carrying the party to November — the stakes have never been higher. We always knew this would get ugly, severely so.
There are still another three and a half months. Things are about to get so much worse. What will they do next?