Trump’s ‘Bullet for Democracy’
Terry H. Schwadron
July 23, 2024
“Last week, I took a bullet for democracy,” Donald Trump told his Grand Rapids, Michigan, rally, recounting again his near brush with an assassin’s gunshot before wandering off into a more familiar litany of insults and abasing remarks about his opponents.
The message is emerging as the new campaign theme, but what is Trump talking about?
As a gunshot victim, Trump can have as much public sympathy as he wants. As an opportunistic image-oriented guy, he even can continue to take advantage of his iconic fist-raise as a pitch for his divine salvation. He can use survival to promote his image of “strength.”
But what does the near miss have to do with Trump protecting democracy
Yesterday, in response to Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race, Trump said Democrats had “stolen” the nomination from Biden, adding, “these people are the real THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!”
It’s as if democracy is a throw-away line.
This is the same Trump whose legions brought about the Jan. 6 attempt to undercut the election voting in 2020, who vows to use the powers of a return to government in retribution for those who have dared to file criminal and civil charges against him or simply oppose him politically.
This is the same Trump whose forces are in courts and state legislatures this year to limit voting, sending intimidating armies of ballot watchers, threaten a halt to certification of vote totals in districts across the country. He’s the same Trump who will not commit to accepting this year’s election results unless he wins, and who already has congressional delegations ready to take any contested vote to the House, where the outcome is assured for him by mathematics. The same Trump who adores “America,” but hates that Americans come in different sizes, genders, outlooks and loyalties.
As he re-declares some of his extreme ideas, including deporting 11 million residents without documentation even if asylum filers and tax cuts, Trump suddenly is playing hard to nail down on other policies, like abortion or health care.
It is understandable that Trump wants a clever line to thwart the Democrats’ campaign thunder that Trump is an existential danger to democracy and peaceful transfer of power. But seeing Trump the election denier as a defender of democracy hardly seems the right choice — or one that communicates anything but confusion.
Security Questions Linger
Clearly, even as Trump makes political hay of the assassination, the questions about the real bullet, and about the how and why of Secret Service decision-making and failures in setting up a protective net over that Pennsylvania rally site. The protection job likely just got more complicated with a Black woman hurtling towards the Democratic nomination, someone bound to draw threats.
At least three separate investigations already have launched into Secret Service thinking and operations, including the immediate House Committee public hering yesterday with Secret Service Director Kimberly A. Cheatle. Vocal congress members, mostly Republican, already have called for her resignation, which may well happen but is certain not to solve any recognized problem either with the staffing or operations of the security force.
Cheatle said the assassination attempt was her agency’s “most significant operational failure” in decades and that she took responsibility for the security problems but did not offer to resign.
As we all are coming to understand, the rise in the number of identified government demanding protection, including families of officials and candidates, the churn of trained Secret Service members, and the spread of violent threats nationwide towards public officials all are hitting at the same time as financial constraints on the agency are tightening and the agency is asking local police for help.
As Cheadle outlined, the agency finds itself sifting through the constantly changing threat array to deploy security forces. It’s not an excuse, just a description of the current situation. Add in partisan-fueled anger that it was Trump who was targeted, and the public flogging took on a familiar air.
There were enough admissions and bureaucratic bungles to go around yesterday. But of all government functions, the one that is least partisan must be the protective services operations. It’s the same group that protects Democrats or Republicans, whether done well or not.
How to React
Addressing perceived Secret Service shortcomings is a goal across parties, as is figuring out how to react to an assassination attempt. Whatever the constraints on protection, what is within the candidates’ control and party thinking is how to talk about violence and about one another.
Trump vowed to ease his most virulent language but has not, insisting that “lowering the temperature” and “unity” are about dropping criminal charges against him personally and not calling him an enemy of democracy — no matter what he has done. Undoubtedly, regardless of what language is used, that Kamala Harris as the expected nominee to Joe Biden, will be broadcasting starting this week.
Why do I believe that Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and world dictators are all sitting back laughing at our chaotic politics and insistence on guns turned on ourselves. They wait for Trump election result to bring about an American isolationism that will let them do whatever they want, and meanwhile revel in the shortcomings of the American systems.
What no one is addressing is the chaos would have been unleashed had Trump been seriously injured or died and whether armed militias from the right would not have waited for police investigations into the shooter before starting to react in the streets. Instead, social media is filled with conspiracy theories about Democratic plots, about withholding Secret Service protection for Trump, and about whether Trump somehow engineered the whole episode as some kind of promotional stunt.
The point is none of this push and pull over who directs the Secret Service has anything to do with taking a bullet for democracy.
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