Take your foot off the gas or risk a crash

Opinion

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This article was published 19/09/2024 (384 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Donald Trump either has an angel on his shoulder or the benefit of inept enemies. Most would probably bet on the latter.

The former U.S. president, who’s currently running for another term in the White House, was reportedly the target of a second assassination attempt over the weekend. The suspect, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, is accused of lying in wait with a gun at a Florida golf course where Trump was playing, before a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle poking out of the course’s shrubbery and opened fire. Routh allegedly dropped the rifle and fled, and was apprehended later. He’s now in court facing charges.

This latest assassination scare has re-ignited concerns over political violence, and Republicans are going back to the tactic that this animosity toward Trump is the result of nastiness from Democrats.

“This rhetoric against President Trump, this narrative that he will be the next dictator, that he is the next Hitler coming, it has got to stop. Enough is enough,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) told Fox News. Equally, Waltz could say enough is enough, and suggested former president Trump stop calling Kamala Harris “Communist, fascist scum” intent on destroying America, as Trump does on a regular basis.

But Waltz didn’t.

Both of Trump’s alleged would-be assassins were arguably more affiliated with Republicans than Democrats: Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot dead after firing on Trump at a Butler, Pa. rally, was a registered Republican. Routh, meanwhile, reportedly wrote that he once voted for Trump, but he now appears to loathe him. Further, neither of them allegedly attacked Trump over the issues Democrats most often excoriate him for; Crooks’s politics seemed muddy at best and Routh’s problems with Trump seem more related to Trump’s stances on Ukraine than anything to do with domestic policy.

But to take on Waltz’s argument that Trump is being unfairly vilified by his opponents with violent consequences: nobody wants to see political violence normalized. We must be able to have free elections without fear that our ideological opponents will resort to bloodshed. However, like all principles, this one is restricted by the limits of human tolerance.

After Crooks’s attempt on Trump’s life, we wrote in this space that, “There is an opportunity this week, as the Republicans hold their national convention, for the party to take stock of the situation and make a change” in its own rhetoric, starting with Trump himself. At least one letter writer pointed out to us that it was laughable to suggest Trump would ever have such a reckoning with himself. Of course, this has proven correct.

If anything, Trump has become worse. He has stuck to his plan to deport millions of immigrants from the country, which in the context of any other nation would be rightly called ethnic cleansing. On top of that, he has taken to racist rhetoric accusing immigrants of stealing people’s household pets and eating them.

On the matter of violence, there is a difference between a good principle and the reality of its likelihood after certain provocations. If Trump were in a bar on a Saturday night, loudly promising to beat the stuffing out of a group of patrons, no one would be surprised if someone got up from their chair and took a swing at him.

The solution is for all sides to restrain their invective, for the Democrats to dial the volume back from 10 and for the Republicans, honestly, to wind it back from 15.

The pragmatic reality is that is not going to happen.

It is like watching a movie where you think you know, but deeply fear, the ending.