Introduction
Let’s begin with that iconic photo, shall we?
Fist raised to reassure his people, and the same fist raised in defiance of his enemies. Red, white, and blue. Red blood, white cuff, and blue jacket. American flag in the background. Blood on his face. The position of the fist makes it look like he is holding the flag up. About the only thing missing is a bald eagle flying in the background, or a cloud in the shape of a bust of George Washington. There is a weird and uncanny providence unfolding in all of this. The whole thing is beyond epic. Trump is clearly a man with basic animal courage.
Given all of this, I am grateful that Trump struck the right note in his statement when he said that it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” God’s holy providence superintends everything, and this really is true about all of our actions . . . rough hew them how we will. But sometimes it is just glaringly obvious, like now.
Now I know there are a bunch of people out there saying indefensible things, as is their habit, such as alleging that this was a false flag operation, wherein Trump agreed to have a bullet graze his ear in order to generate the mother of all photo ops, or other farcical theories. But although this one is straight out of the central business district of Nutterville, such people do have one indisputable fact in their corner. Look at that photo again. It was obviously staged. Just not by Trump.
On Not Taking the Bait
I have been urging everyone for some months now “not to take the bait.” This is just the kind of situation in which it would be quite possible to ignore what I have been saying and “take the bait” anyhow. But how might that happen in this case, and why would it be bad?
The bullet that grazed Trump was just inches away from blowing his brains out on camera. Had that happened, what would the national reaction have been? We were not only inches away from Trump dying, we were also inches away from a bloody civil war. God was very kind to us. But once the shooting starts in a civil war, it would be the easiest thing in the world for the leftists to level it up and assert a moral equivalence between the two sides, and to summon up troops to deal with the insurrection. If they can make the J6 disorder into an insurrection, which they successfully did, how hard would it be for them to make an actual insurrection into an insurrection?
But I can hear the objections. Are you trying to tell us that we should just continue to put up with this evil nonsense? Not at all. I am not arguing for no reactions. I am not arguing for no forceful and decisive reactions. Rather I am rather arguing for no stupid reactions. And what I mean by stupid reactions would be some MAGA nut threatening to shoot some blue state governor in retaliation. What would happen after that? The news cycle would immediately have a photos of Trump’s attacker (one Thomas Matthew Crooks) and our MAGA guy side-by-side, alongside a think piece asking, “What can be done about the growth of violent extremism? Reexamining the case for gun control . . .”
Taking the bait means reacting to this violence in an unhinged manner. Of course we need to respond to it, and anger is an appropriate part of the response. What I mean by not taking the bait, as I speak to the fish here, is that he should not do what the fisherman wants him to do. He should make a point of doing something else instead.
And what might that be? That would be working to make sure that Trump is elected in the kind of landslide that changes the working definition of landslide. It really is true that if it is not close they can’t cheat. The new stretch goal of the Trump campaign now should be to carry all fifty states, beating the previous Nixon/McGovern record. Donate money, volunteer time, get all your friends to vote. Don’t do anything that the wicked (who are still in power) could point to as a “plausible” justification for “postponing” the election. Don’t be a hothead. Don’t be stupid. Don’t threaten anybody online for any reason. When it comes to that kind of thing, just cool your baby jets. And you should also cool those jets for prudential personal reasons, if only to keep all your friends from suspecting you are a Fed.
And if the bad guys were to “postpone” the election (for the sake of “preserving democracy,” of course), don’t go get your guns then either. In the worst case scenario, our playbook has to be taken from the Poles, such that we pull a Solidarity movement, only on an American scale. So in the meantime, don’t be an idiot.
Republicans Pounce
Someone has wisely observed that when Republicans screw up, that’s the story, and when Democrats screw up, the Republican reaction is the story. CNN had a headline to the effect that MAGA types were folding this incident into their broader case alleging that the left had created a hostile political environment. For our part, we don’t see how Sherlock does it.
Along these lines, Auron MacIntyre has said that no matter how much you despise the media, it isn’t enough. The essential truth of that observation was on full display here. When Nancy and I first heard the news, it was just minutes into the event. I went to various news sites, and learned virtually nothing worthwhile. CNN said that Trump “fell.” Somebody else said that he was removed by the Secret Service because of “loud noises.” I see. Trump fled a rally because a balloon popped? Somebody else said that the blood might have been the result of the Secret Service tackling him.
I basically found out what was happening via X, now our new open source news channel. There were conflicting reports and some confusion and contradictions, but it sorted out pretty quickly. But the basic outlines of what happened was plainly obvious from the first footage I saw. Gun shots. Trump grabbed his right ear, and then ducked. Secret Service agents swarmed him. And the mainstream media just bloviated on and on, pretending to be rigorous and and objective and precise, and it was clear that they did not want to admit what the gods of political campaigns were in the process of giving to Trump.
“Let us, my friends, quickly minimize anything that might help Trump and tiptoe on out of here.”
Clauswitz and Election Interference
The military thinker Clauswitz is famously summarized as saying that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” The same thing goes for assassinations and assassination attempts. However unrighteous, or unlawful, or horrible the assassination in question might be, it remains inescapably political.
This means that no one need feel bad about thinking in terms of the political repercussions of such a thing. When you first heard that this event was going down, did you not begin praying that it was not some disgruntled former Trump speechwriter who did it? Instead of that, wanting the assailant to be an Antifa nutter? This was not a disordered wish. These things are in fact preeminently political. That is why they happen. It is not wrong to think in political terms concerning them.
In this case, the would-be assassin was a registered Republican, but had donated to some hard left causes, indicating perhaps a recent radicalization. Or perhaps, since Pennsylvania is a closed primary state, and lots of Democrats like to register Republican in order to sway the other team’s elections, he might have been doing that. We don’t know. He was only 20-years-old, and entirely against his wishes, he gave Trump the largest in-kind campaign contribution imaginable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted that when you “strike at a king, you must kill him.” The dictum is wise, as can be seen here.
Cheating and Plausibility Issues
A lot of the controversy around 2020 concerned the issues of electoral cheating. There were the allegations of funny business in the middle of the night (e.g. Maricopa, Fulton), but there was also the electoral interference that was going on in the broad light of day (Russia! Russia! Russia!). It was looking to be something quite similar this next time around. We were all braced for sudden appearance of hundreds of thousands of votes at 2 am in various locales, and we had also taken notice of the brazen electoral interference going under the name of “lawfare.” They were still running the same two plays—midnight skullduggery and open banana republic stuff.
But then Joe face-planted in front of the whole country in the debate. That can’t be unseen. And in a reassurance video issued today, he called the Ballot Box the Battle Box. Okay. People are no longer sure he is going to live until the election. He is a propped-up sleepwalker, and everybody sees it. Combine that with the swell of popular sentiment that is going to head in Trump’s direction after this assassination attempt, and this means that “voila! extra millions of votes from nowhere” will not be seen as even remotely plausible. That lie won’t work this time. The left has not abandoned its allegiance to lies, but there are a few smart people on their side who have a good idea of what kind of lie might not do the trick this time around.
In 2020, a lot of people still had residual faith in institutions. The cheating was flagrant and visible, but a lot of conservatives were still sure that somebody responsible was going to make sure that everything stayed on the up and up. That wasn’t true, but a lot of conservatives still treated skeptics like “election deniers.” A lot of conservatives still wanted our elections to be honest, and they wanted them desperately enough to pretend. Now nobody believes anything.
A Trump defeat against Newsom could be made plausible. A Trump defeat at the hands of Biden would be a badly-written YA fantasy story, one that would not be able to get the reader to willingly suspend his disbelief. It would not be remotely plausible. We should still keep our guard up, but that scenario seems far less likely to me now.
Overheated Rhetoric
It is not possible to resort to the old norms in a crisis like this when all your behavior the rest of the time constitutes an ongoing insult to those norms. If Trump really is a “threat to democracy,” if he really is Hitler redivivus (as the New Republic cover currently has it), if he is going to usher in a Mordor-like totalitarian regime, then what could possibly be wrong with an assassination to save democracy? We lionize Bonhoeffer because of his willingness to be part of a plot to assassinate Hitler. Ehud did the Israelites a great service when he took out Eglon (Judg. 3:15).
What kind of sense does it make for Biden to call Trump up to congratulate him on his survival if Trump really is a threat to democracy? The call reveals the hypocrisy and hollowness of the prior rhetoric. This reality puts them on the horns of a dilemma. If their rhetoric is to be believed, then Thomas Crooks is a hero and a martyr. If it is not to be believed, then why were they talking that way? Biden’s phone call to Trump was as hollow as a jug, but it did reveal their unwillingness to have their overheated rhetoric be taken seriously.
Now the leftists are certainly shameless enough not to apologize for their overheated rhetoric that created the climate in which this attempted assassination occurred. They ought to, but they won’t. And they are probably shameless enough to resume this rhetoric as soon as they think it is possible. But I also think a number of them are shrewd enough to realize that it is a tactic that will have lost a lot of its effectiveness.
There are four months of campaigning left, and so going forward, the Democrats will not be able to resort to that kind of overheated rhetoric, or at least not the same way or to the same extent. They won’t apologize for what they have done, and yet they are not in a good position to start doing it again at the same level. If they do start up again, the first and obvious question would be “so you are saying the assassination attempt was legit?” And this would be impossible to say on stage in a presidential debate—particularly the way Biden would say it.
The problem this creates for them is that this overheated rhetoric the only real message they have. They have to figure out how to limp along without their central theme.
In the meantime, all of this happened after Joe Biden’ disastrous debate performance, and his barely okay performance at the NATO presser. This put a number of things in motion, with quite a few Democrats on the record saying that Biden needs to step down, and big donors saying that they will not donate if Biden is still on the ticket. When this particular move started, just a few weeks ago, the aspiration was to get someone on the ticket who could win against Trump, and who wouldn’t get shellacked—like Biden was going to be, or as Kamala likely would be. Maybe Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer could swoop in and save the day. But whoever gets put in now—if anybody gets put in—it will have to be in the role of a sacrificial lamb. And they don’t want to put in one of their future worthies as a sacrificial lamb. They want to continue to groom them for stardom.
So watch. If the hue and cry to replace Joe dies down, as it well might, that could be a signal that the Dems are conceding this election—in order to let the current team of Biden/Harris be that sacrificial lamb.
DEI & the Secret Service
At the same time, there is another major problem going on.
There needs to be a thorough investigation and review of the catastrophic security failure that this assassination attempt revealed. But that investigation will be conducted by the FBI. The challenge is that the FBI no longer has any credibility left in such matters. A bunch of the people in the upper echelons of the FBI ought to be in jail themselves, and they are going to oversee this? They are Trump’s political enemies over there at the FBI, and so why are they going to issue a report that absolutely no one believes? Were we in need of a report that no one believes? Were we running low?
A thorough review of the Secret Service is also in order. It is clear that something went wrong on Saturday. We do not yet know what it was, but we do know that it was. It was good that a SS sniper took out the would-be assassin seconds after he opened fire on the former president. And I understand that the rules of engagement for the SS prohibit opening fire before an assailant opens fire—because you don’t want to take out a dumb teenager on the roof with his telescope. But the real question has to do with how that sniper got onto that roof in the first place. Why was it not secured?
I am not offering any answers to that question, but I do understand that it is a question that has to be answered in full. Was it because the detail guarding Trump was understaffed? Trump does not receive the full presidential coverage. Was it because of sheer incompetence? Was it because the DEI cult has rotted out the effectiveness of the agency? Everything should be on the table. That won’t be the case, but everything should be. This includes the possibility of collusion, and that this gap in security was left open accidentally on purpose. That is one of the options.
That iconic photo that we began with? The reason the photographer got that shot was because the girl agent in front wasn’t big enough to cover up Trump from that angle. If the camera had been a gun it would have been all over. So our former president was not adequately protected, but at least we had the requisite number of girl agents on the job.
Although I do have to note the glaring absence of Pacific Islanders on the detail. We can do better.
What Elon Musk Really Needs to Do
I mentioned earlier that the official investigation of the case, and any review of the Secret Service, are likely to be numbered among the best jokes we ever heard. But we are now in a position to do something about that. Elon Musk needs to create a space on X that will constitute an open source investigation.
The difference between this situation and the JFK assassination (for example) is that this time there were hundreds of cameras present, and running. Anyone who has a photo or footage of any part of that day should be able to create a simple profile, and upload what he has. Others should be able to upvote anything particularly noteworthy.
Don’t wait for the official report. We already don’t believe the official report. And somebody with access to him should tell Elon.
The American Way
Last comment. I have seen some comments online to the effect that this is not the American way. I understand the sentiment, and do agree with the affections expressed by the sentiment. But looked at from another angle, it kind of is the American way. To date we have had 45 men who have served as president of the United States. Four of them have been assassinated while in office (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), four had serious assassination attempts made on them (FDR, Truman, George W. Bush, and Gerald Ford), one president was wounded while in office (Reagan), two presidential candidates have been shot (RFK was killed, and George Wallace was wounded) and two former presidents have been wounded while campaigning for reelection (Teddy Roosevelt and now Trump).
The Secret Service exists for a reason. That reason is far more important that all our current diversity games.