This article was originally published by Connor O’Keeffe at The Mises Institute.
On Saturday evening, former president and 2024 frontrunner Donald Trump survived an attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The attack was utterly shocking, not only because a would-be assassin was able to get so close to Trump with a rifle but because of how close he was to success.
The rally started off like any other. After his long walkout to the song “Proud to Be an American,” the former president began speaking just after 6:05 p.m. EDT. Four minutes later, at 6:09 p.m., people listening to the speech from just outside the venue began filming a man crawling on the roof of a glass factory. They frantically tried to alert nearby police officers.
It appears that officers did respond to the cries from rallygoers that there was a man on the roof. However, being close to the building, officers reportedly could not see what the onlookers were yelling about. One officer climbed onto the roof and found twenty-year-old Matthew Crooks lying down, pointing his rifle at him. Unable to draw his weapon, the officer retreated back down the ladder.
Roughly a minute before, at 6:10 p.m., Trump requested a chart of immigration trends be displayed on the venue’s two large video screens. As the shooter confronted the police officer on the glass factory roof, Trump used the chart to highlight how immigration took off after he left office. At 6:11:27 p.m., after the officer had retreated, onlookers began screaming, “He’s got a gun,” as Crooks lined up his shot. At exactly 6:11:33 p.m., Trump turned his head to look at the chart on the screen. Three-tenths of a second later, Crooks fired a shot that hit the former president in the right ear. Had Trump not turned his head, the same bullet would have gone through the back of his skull.
The layout of the rally venue is seen Monday, July 15, 2024 in Butler, Pa. Trump was shot standing on the red stage in the center while looking at the video screen behind the bleachers just above and to the left of the stage. The shooter took position on the nearest roof in the cluster of buildings near the top left. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Crooks got a short volley of shots off as Trump dropped below the podium and his nearby Secret Service detail piled on top of him. Seconds later, agents on a Secret Service countersniper team shot and killed Crooks. Agents secured Trump and ushered him off stage to a waiting SUV, but not before Trump stood up, raised his fist, and, with blood on his ear and face, called out defiantly to his frightened supporters — resulting in one of the most iconic images in modern American history.
The American political sphere was uncharacteristically quiet and reflective in the hours after the attack. Figures from across the ideological spectrum condemned the use of political violence and wished President Trump a speedy recovery.
It’s somewhat frustrating when members of the political establishment condemn political violence. Politics is violence, after all. And political leaders are more than happy to launch wars that kill millions of people or use the threat of violence to force Americans to do or not do any number of things against their will. They just want the use of violence to be incited in a respectable manner and carried out by means they deem legitimate. It’s only when violence gets turned against government officials and their families that we hear them speak out against the use of violence to achieve political ends.
But there is also something revealing about top Democrats and members of the political establishment condemning the attack and wishing President Trump a fast recovery. Most of these same people have spent the last eight years doing everything they could to brand Trump as the leader and individual source of a uniquely evil domestic movement. This movement is presented as being all set to institute a bloodthirsty, theocratic, authoritarian regime in Washington if they win the election in November. Trump himself is characterized as a Russian-backed Hitler-like figure who is itching to release “death squads” on gay people and his many political opponents once in office. We’re told he will abolish the democratic process and literally “destroy the world.”
Trump supporters are not immune. Those who are skeptical of the ongoing policy of sending money and weapons to Ukraine are equated to Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s and ‘40s. The same goes for the apparent Confederate-like “insurrectionists” of Jan. 6 and their sympathizers who voice doubts about the 2020 presidential election.
From the establishment’s perspective, if there really were a domestic figure placed on the American political scene by the Russian government with the purpose of abolishing the democratic process and ushering in a dictatorial regime that will hunt down and kill Americans the president doesn’t like, it would be justified to stop that person with whatever means are necessary. Instead, after this candidate suffered an injury in Saturday’s shooting, the entire political establishment wished him well.
They did so because they are lying about what they expect a second Trump term would bring. This is part of a broader, ongoing effort where figures in politics and media try to terrify the American people into voting as the establishment wants them to. They did it with COVID-19, they’re doing it with the climate, and, at least until Saturday, they’ve done it with Trump.
The shooting on Saturday should never have happened. We are all incredibly lucky that we do not have to navigate whatever would have resulted had Trump not turned his head at the last second. But good can come from this if more Americans come to understand that the terrifying future the political establishment promises we are doomed to endure if they don’t get their way is simply a means to deceive us.
