Following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, there have been the usual pleas that this was an assault of democracy and has no place in America. An assault on democracy it might have been, but political killings are as American as apple pie.
In just the past century we've lived through the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Huey Long, Harvey Milk, and George Moscone.
Politically adjacent murders include Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Medger Evers, and the Freedom Summer murders.
Attempted assassinations of presidents are too numerous to count, but even if you include only the ones that got close you have FDR, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Harry Truman. Among non-presidents you can count George Wallace, Gabby Giffords, and Steve Scalise.
And let's not forget the 1954 Capitol shootings or the January 6 insurrection.
On average, we have a politically motivated attempt to murder someone every five years or so. And that's just the high-profile murders. There are dozens or hundreds more if you count less prominent political figures.
Welcome to America
Ah, the land of milk and honey, guns, and murder.
at least trump can rest easy he's a tougher person than shinzo abe & benazir butto.
This guy's profile seems more like a mass shooter than political assassin.
Probably the nearby rally was too much to resist.
I have to agree with you. Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, talking about political assassination and even domestic terrorism. No doubt those need to be ruled out if possible, but I'm thinking he was frustrated dweeb looking for 15 minutes of fame. Didn't make it 15 minutes, however.
yup.
we already had the mass shooting at a concert (crossroads) in las vegas. the movie theatre mass shooting (batman: dark knight rises) in aurora, co. multiple school shootings, including the og at columbine, plus virginia tech & the parkland event that trump would have rushed the shooter at to stop him. the gilroy garlic festival. the tops supermarket. ft. hood. & on the bombing front a federal building (oklahoma city) & an olympics (centennial park, atlanta).
really, doing an active shooter event at a presidential (candidate) whistlestop or other uch speaking event is the final frontier for the armed & psychotic loner, emphasis on the armed. had michael crooks been successful, he'd make the giffords shooter james holmes, who grievously wounded a mere congresswoman, look like open mic nite.
I assumed the extra shoots were still intended for Trump. But I hadn't thought about the mass shooter angle. Maybe he was just shooting into the crowd.
I agree that was probably intended for Trump, he just didn't have time to start blasting away more generally.
The second amendment, as currently interpreted, is virtually an open invitation to try your hand at this national pastime.
Dark but true statement.
I am impressed considering the seemingly endless universe of disaffected well-armed young men in the US that we have not had an attempted Presidential level attempt for 43 years prior to this.
Although the Secret Service is being eviscerated for this, they almost certainly have been doing a lot right over the past few decades, so I would be hesitant to jump on the criticism bandwagon, especially since few are expert in Presidential-type protection.
Exactly. Until I see the actual ear lobe damage, I have to assume this was an extension of professional wrestling.
Best explanation I've seen yet is it was glass shrapnel from the teleprompter. A bullet wouldn't have caused a slice or a graze like that -- it'd be more torn (or worse).
that makes a lot more sense to me. i already thought it was crazy odds that a bullet would be so close it hit the ear and nothing else, but if the damage to the ear was minimal that sounds even more unlikely and a cut from shrapnel or something else like just hitting the ground hard when he was tackled seems far more plausible.
"they almost certainly have been doing a lot right over the past few decades"
Maybe. Or maybe it's a mix of luck and the fact that most people with the kind of mental illness that makes you want to assassinate someone aren't very skilled at executing the plan. It's a lot easier to walk into a mall or a school and shoot a bunch of people than kill a president with a giant security apparatus, even if the secret service is not doing a great job.
Of course assassinaton attempts are an ordinary feature of American politics! So, to show his toughness and determination to save America from the radical left-wing Democrats, Trump will have to continue to hold public rallies regularly, all over the country! This will also give his security team the chance to redeem their damaged reputations. If the shooter had been a military-trained marksman with a properly-equipped weapon instead of a 20-year-old gun club member and kitchen staffer with an AR-15, Trump would not have been pumping his fist in the air. Everyone on Trump's team -- along with all the campaign teams -- will know this.
The gun is our national symbol.
We've rarely worked together in our politics in the way it's imagined.
Go back to the years after the Civil War in the South and try being a Republican in those days. Things were definitely different.
Or, 1856 for the Brooks / Sumner debate in the world's greatest deliberative body.
Hundreds of white Republicans were murdered in typost Civil War South, in addition to many more Blacks.
I really liked this article in Politico this morning, particularly the part closer to the end where the author suggests that eliminating primaries would help reduce extremism.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/14/how-to-curb-political-violence-qa-00168105
correction to my post about thepolitico: you do not in fact have to hand it to them.
I continue to await anxiously the chorus of calls from sensible Republicans for some reasonable restrictions on the easy access by low-level nutcases like this kid to high-powered weapons and ammunition. [holds breath...]
[crickets ... sound of unconscious body collapsing to floor ... more crickets]
Add the plots to kidnap and/or kill Whitmer and Pelosi to the list. (They popped into my head after posting similar thoughts over the weekend.) Political killings are not the level they are in, say, Mexico, but here in America a lot more common than your guy winning the White House.
Trump, yesterday: "It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening."
I expect that acceptance speech he has ripped up and is now rewriting will have something like this for a theme:
"I have come to save America, for I am the Messiah."
Look out for the simpleton with a complex.
Breaking News:
Donald Trump announces that Vladimir Putin has approved J.D. Vance to be his running mate.
I agree. What was so unexpected about this was not that some really mixed up kid would get access to a rifle and go try to shoot someone. It's that the Secret Service would screw up so badly that he came with in an inch (literally) of killing a former president.
The thing I find shocking (which by now i probably shouldn't) is how incompetent the secret service seems to have been. I don't really know anything about this stuff, but from what I've read and common sense it seems like they dropped the ball in multiple, very obvious, ways. A quick list of just the obvious problems:
1) Failure to extend the security perimeter to include a rooftop within 150 yards, an extremely reasonable range for a sniper shot
2) Failure to respond quickly to attendee warnings pointing out the shooter on the roof
3) Failure to have the rooftop where the shooter was under surveillance by counter sniper teams (of which i think there were 4 on site)
4) slow response after the shooting began
5) failure to immediately evacuate the president after crowd warnings to police and/or SS members
6) Failure to identify and investigate a guy in camo walking around with a rifle before he even got onto the building
7)Poor communication between local police and SS in charge
And I'm sure there's much more. Maybe someone with more expertise in this stuff can tell me I'm wrong and this is normal, but it sure seems real bad.
On point 6, it was a WHITE guy with a weapon. Remember how during the George Floyd demonstrations the police welcomed guys like Kyle Rittenhouse?
I'm sure that the white guy thing was a big part of it, but jesus, you're still the secret service (or local police working with the SS) protecting a former president. Err on the freakin side of caution. Hell, maybe it's a gay, black antifa guy in a white guy costume running a false flag operation.
As far as I know, all the assassinations and assassination attempts on presidents and presidential candidates have been committed by white guys (or in Ford's case, white women). A white guy with a rifle should be VERY alarming to Secret Service protection teams.
Yes, but the GOP actively courts white guys with guns wearing cammo. It's a prime demographic for them. It's just business as usual even for the Secret Service.
the ufc piece.
The attempted assassin of FDR killed Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago.
Jackie Speier and Feinstein's husband seem worthy of note here.
Hear the words of the man saved by God's miracle.
Has there ever been a more ignorant occupant of high public office?
& this man expected john f. kennedy, sr.'s, namesake son to be his runningmate.
Don't forget Dick Cheney's attempted assassination of a hunting partner.