How things have—and have not—changed.

July 15, 2024

Where to begin?

A young man two years out of high school used a weapon of war in an attack that sought to deny 70 million Americans the opportunity to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice. The weapon was purchased legally and carried in a public space as allowed by the laws of Pennsylvania. The assailant failed in his objective by a matter of inches. The nation was thus spared the tragedy and chaos that would have followed the assassination of one of the two major party candidates for president.

Many media outlets viewed the attempted assassination through a single lens: How will this affect the horse race of presidential politics? As I wrote earlier this morning, that is the least important question we should be asking ourselves. The question suggests that we are helpless victims being battered by history as we await the outcome of the 2024 election. Not true! We will determine the outcome of the election, but only if we believe in the righteousness of our cause and have confidence in our ability to convince others that our vision of America’s future is the only sane alternative. We can do that. It will take tremendous effort on our part, but we can do it.

I have spent much of the day sifting through articles (forwarded by readers) that describe how Republicans will pervert and distort the message of this tragedy to benefit Trump and hurt Biden politically. Other articles engage in the profound silliness of attempting to quantify how the failed assassination attempt will affect polling. We are not sheep. We are not potted plants. We are flesh and blood human beings with intellect and free will. No one who fears for their reproductive liberty or right to same-sex marriage will suddenly change their mind and vote for Trump because he survived an assassination attempt. Let’s stop the nonsense of attempting to convert an assassination attempt into a polling prediction.

I don’t care what Republicans will or won’t say about the attempted assassination. They have demonstrated that they will lie about everything without shame or limit. Given that steady state, the question is not “What will Republicans say about the attempted assassination?” but “What will we say?” We must stop being reactive and go on offense. The Democratic message is one of truth, hope, sanity, safety, dignity, and compassion. President Biden has the strongest legislative record of any president in 75 years. Let’s shout those truths from the rooftops!

And the last thing that should happen is for Democrats to be cowed into silence or curtail their truthful criticism of Donald Trump. He said he wants to be a “dictator for one day” (which is the same thing as being a dictator, period). He has called for the mass deportation of 10 million immigrants. He has called for the “termination of the Constitution.” He has called for the jailing and persecution of his political opponents by the DOJ. He interfered in an election by paying for the silence of a porn star with whom he had a sexual encounter and has been adjudicated by a jury to be a sexual abuser. He incited and has now excused, condoned, and praised the violent insurrectionists who attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

No, Joe Biden and Democrats should not relent in speaking the truth of who Donald Trump is and the vision of America he seeks to promote: white Christian nationalism in the service of fascism. He is the same Donald Trump he was before the assassination attempt. The threat to democracy remains the same. The threat to individual liberties and the health and financial security of elderly Americans remains the same. As does the daily menace of mass violence at schools across America.

As Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote in The Guardian,

While we condemn political violence, we should understand that getting shot does not ennoble the target – or transform victims into moral leaders. A presidential race is not a WWW wrestling drama. Trump should be assessed – as anyone who would lead this country – on his behavior, his character, and his agenda. That responsibility does not disappear because someone took a shot at him. The prospect of a Trump presidency was as deeply unsettling before Saturday’s shooting incident – and it remains so after it.

So, what can we do? The hopeful truth is that most Americans (65%) support an assault weapons ban, while a minority (26%) oppose such a ban. See Statista, Support for banning assault-style weapons by party U.S. 2023. If 65% of Americans support an assault weapons ban, why don’t we have one? Answer: The Supreme Court, the “blood money” from gun lobbyists, and gerrymandering that allows the minority to maintain a stranglehold on the majority.

The will of the majority will be frustrated so long as there is no political cost to opposing an assault weapons ban. The moment that opposing an assault weapons ban threatens GOP control over state legislatures, Congress, and the Supreme Court is the moment that an assault weapons ban will pass.

The scale and depravity of gun violence is the US is so immense that people have difficulty in comprehending the true nature of the threat. After mass tragedies, many Americans pay attention for a few weeks and then look away because the reality of gun violence is incomprehensible; it requires sustained effort and discipline to hold the immensity of the threat in mind.

Each of us must make gun safety activism a part of our daily regime. It does not matter how many other causes we join; leaving gun-safety activism to others is no longer acceptable. An assassin’s bullet came within inches of upending the US presidential election and civil order in the US. It is only a matter of time before there is another assault rifle mass shooting in a school, workplace, or public space. It has to stop—and it won’t until gun safety is the top issue in every race.

There are dozens of effective gun safety organizations in the US. Mom’s Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Students Demand Action are three affiliated organizations that form the core of the gun safety movement in America. Become a member of a local chapter, participate in grassroots events, or donate on a regular basis to help compete with dark money from gun lobbyists. I invite readers to promote other gun safety organizations in the Comments section.

There is so much more that can and should be said about the failed assassination attempt. David Frum spoke to many readers in his piece in The Atlantic, The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator. Frum does a masterful job explaining Republican hypocrisy on the violence we just witnessed:

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.

And in truly inspired prose, Frum captures the simultaneous horror of what happened to Trump and the threat he presents to society:

Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life. [¶]

Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.

Exactly: We must find the “will and the language” to explain how the gunman and Trump are “joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.” And as we raise the alarm, we must also become active members of the gun safety movement. Every one of us. When that happens, gun safety will assume its rightful place as the defining issue of preserving democracy for generations to come.

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Opportunity for Reader Engagement

Heather Cox Richardson Talks Project 2025 – Monday, July 15, 7PM ET

Join Red Wine & Blue tonight, July 15, at 7:00PM ET to hear Heather Cox Richardson speak about Project 2025 and how the policies in it would change the nation as we know it.

While we know that Project 2025 will destroy civil rights, reproductive freedom and turn our country towards extremist Christian Nationalism—too many of our friends and family are completely unaware. Explore how we can change that, together. 

We need to talk not only about what Project 2025 will do—but also how we can stop it. 

History has given us a roadmap for stopping Project 2025, and Heather Cox Richardson is going to speak about what we need to do, and how. So much is at stake right now, and we need to make sure the dangers of Project 2025 don’t remain hidden. No one is better qualified to help us meet the challenge than our all-time favorite historian Heather Cox Richardson.

Sign up here: https://go.redwine.blue/hcr715-os

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Concluding Thoughts

Last Friday, one day before the assassination attempt on Trump, Joe Biden gave a dynamic speech in Detroit that hit hard at Trump's criminality. Biden holds campaign event in Detroit | PBS News.

The speech is a preview of the campaign to come. If you can, watch the entire speech, especially the section beginning at the 22-minute mark. Biden calls Trump a convicted felon, a rapist, a fraudster, and a failed businessman who repeatedly declared bankruptcy. Joe Biden will refrain from making those attacks for a few days out of respect for Trump after the recent attempt on Trump's life, but he will return to those facts on the campaign trail. And they are facts, not “heated rhetoric,” as Republicans are now claiming.  

As President Biden said on Sunday evening, violence has no place in America, and the attack on Donald Trump was inexcusable. But Donald Trump remains the same political threat to democracy today that he was on Friday. We have a moral obligation to ensure that our fellow citizens understand that urgent truth when they vote in the 2024 presidential election.

Talk to you tomorrow!