Aftermath of Trump’s assassination attempt: Republicans’ blindspot exposed

After the failed assassination of Donald Trump there was no shortage of political sermonizing and benign rhetoric calling for nonviolence and peaceful coexistence between the two major parties as though “turning down the rhetoric” was some kind of bipartisan quandary. Nothing could be further from the political truth. This is an entirely one-sided Trumpian phenomenon as shown by nearly a decade of data, including most recently by the “apocalyptic language” used at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

In the immediate wake of the assassin’s attempt on the life of the insurrectionist-in-chief, Trump’s vice president pick, JD Vance, posted on X that Joe Biden’s campaigning rhetoric had “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” The 39-year-old rookie senator representing Ohio for the past 18 months certainly is no exception to the toning down of the toxic rhetoric characteristic of the Trumpian MAGA party.

Missing from this Trumpian clown show in Milwaukee was the only living Republican president, Donald Trump’s former vice president, and members of his Cabinet. Though we did hear from Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock, and Tucker Carlson. By the way, where were the military officers who worked with President Trump during his administration? Well, none of this brass would give the time of day to the treasonous commander-in-chief.

Although the RNC nominated and confirmed their presidential and vice presidential candidates for 2024, the every four years get together seemed much more like a revivalist celebration than a traditional party convention with some kind of policy-defining agenda. Not that the third Trump presidential campaign requires or needs one. Project 2025 has laid out the authoritarian agenda beginning on day one of a second Trump administration. Even as the dictator-in-waiting has been trying unsuccessfully to distance himself from the plan.

Moreover, Trump and his party are not about doing anything positive for the average person or the environment. Based on the record of their previous four years in office, they oppose health care, child care, educational debt relief, climate change, regulation and infrastructure development. Previously, they appropriated huge tax reductions for the wealthiest corporations and Americans while, at the same time, growing the largest national debt in U.S. history.

Trumpians are primarily concerned with restricting human rights and individual freedoms for the marginalized masses; specializing in social harm, scaremongering, and xenophobia. Their signature campaign promise has been to defeat an imaginary invasion of criminal immigrants and to carry out the largest mass deportation program since the 1950s. At the beginning of the year, Boss Trump and his congressionally organized sycophants killed the largest bipartisan immigration bill since the 1980sbecause they all agreed that it would look good for Biden and take the issue off the political table leaving nothing else for Trump to run on.

As Aaron Blake wrote on July 16 for The Washington Post, “dark rhetoric reigned” for the second night running as the “GOP’s purported effort to turn down the volume ran into” the Trumpian thirst for blood and the fact that both human cruelty and “red meat sells” best. In a few words, Trump’s revivalist cult is also about sadomasochism in everyday life. On that evening, things were kicked off with Gov. Jim Justice (R), a U.S. Senate candidate from West Virginia who warned that the nation would “become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November.”

Welcome to George Orwell’s world of 1984. Since Trump became president in 2017 doublespeak has been playing 24/7 on large and small screens alike.

Following Justice, conventioneers were treated to a pre-recorded video where Bernie Moreno, a U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla) and Trump were all condemning Democrats because they are “destroying the country.” Once again we have a case of the kettle calling the pot black.

Meanwhile, the Trumpian movement for both lawlessness and disorder has been operating across institutional arrangements to deconstruct them ever since Trump lost the unrigged presidential election in 2020 and after he was not impeached for a second time because Republican senators placed individual and collective power above their oaths of office to the U.S. Constitution. Following Trump’s four criminal indictments, the so-called party of law and order, which it mythically never was, ramped up full-time attacks on the rule of law and American democracy by way of demonizing rhetoric, polymorphous weaponization, and mafioso-like intimidation.

Also speaking on the second night of the convention was the last contender left standing in the 2024 Republican primary for president, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. During her campaigning for the nomination Haley told the voters that Trump was too focused on his own grievances and vendettas to lead the country. She also repeatedly called out the former president, as someone who didn’t respect the military, didn’t know right from wrong, and surrounded himself in chaos.

According to Vanity Fair, Haley further maintained that Trump was “unhinged,” “diminished,” “mentally unfit” and that he needed to take a “cognitive test.” On top of Trump “not being qualified” this time around, she pointed out that he was a “sexual abuser” who could not “win a general election.” Then, the first and only woman governor of South Carolina concluded that making Trump the Republican Party’s nominee for president would be “suicide for our country.” Having come home to roost so she will hopefully have a political future, Haley told Republicansvoters that she and Trump agreed on keeping America safe from the Democrats who have “moved so far to the left that they’re putting our freedoms in danger.” And “for the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump” because a unified GOP is essential for saving our country.

Meanwhile, both before and after the attempted assassination there has not been enough serious examination of the unified and collective discourse surrounding the GOP leadership of hateful speech, verbal violence, intentional lying, and fraudulent behavior – all in deference to and defense of an insurrectionary traitor and a likely dictator-in-chief if he is elected once more.

This ironical rhetoric, oratorial nonsense, and pure poppycock has continued unabated for the past 42 months with little, if any, MAGA remorse, disillusionment or introspection — even after a failed assassination nearly killed their recalcitrant leader.

One would think that at least a few of these minions instead of capitulating to Trump and humiliating themselves over and over before anyone with half a brain might be saying to themselves, “what goes around comes around.” Other henchmen could be thinking about their own karma and how they may not be as lucky as Teflon Don.

Less philosophically and more analytically, there has been sparse discussion among the talking heads related to Trump’s “grooming for violence” launched during his first campaign in 2016. Presently, we find ourselves in the ninth consecutive year of such violence propagation. Worse yet, this type of emotionally charged violence has been sanctioned and normalized by several “unconstitutional” MAGA Supreme Court rulings, which among other things have concluded that Trump is a King, if not the Messiah. Hence, Trump cannot be disqualified from seeking the presidency for manufacturing an insurrection and he cannot be criminally prosecuted for committing treason against the United States.

All of this legal madness underscores the absurdity, hypocrisy, and arrogance that was on full display by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who with a straight face told the conventioneers: “We in the Republican Party are the law-and-order team.”

Oh really? Johnson was one of the chief architects and organizers of the fake electors scheme and the conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidency from the American people.

The speaker, who was unknown at the time, rounded up 146 of his House Republican colleagues who all refused to certify Joe Biden as president simply because they did not like the outcome of what Trump’s “fixer” and Attorney General William Barr, election officials in each of the 50 states, and Federal agencies overseeing election integrity have asserted was the most secure presidential election in U.S. history.

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On day three of the GOP convention, The Bulwark crew described the evening’s theme as foreign policy caving to Vladimir Putin wrapped around the acceptance speech of JD Vance for vice president. For those that may not know, like so many Republican leaders Vance not too long ago was a Never Trumper who had referred to former president Trump as “America’s Hitler” before he was born again. Today, the Republican vice presidential candidate is a MAGA politician on steroids with extremist views on abortion, the border, and the war between Russia and Ukraine.

With respect to women, Vance articulates that they should remain in marriages with their violent and sexually abusive husbands. Trump cynically selected Vance to be his underboss or consigliere because he thought the vice president to be along with his bogus notions about impoverished people and woke culture would shore up the white male working class misogynist vote.

Pivoting to the Trumpian mindset at the convention, Amanda Marcotte reporting from Milwaukee for Salon wrote, “Republicans are riled up by the shooting,” but “they don’t seem especially bothered about almost losing their leader.” As a matter of fact, “Trump nearly getting killed is making the crowd inside Fiserv Forum palpably giddy. Watching Eric Trump speak about the attack Monday night was startling, as he seemed more stoked to rev up the crowd than be upset over the violence inflicted on his father.”

As for concern about the death of one of their MAGA husbands and father of three children, the life-changing injury to another supporter, and the two other persons who were shot. Well, in the MAGA world beyond the token prayers they have become collateral damage for the greater good of Trumpism. Not unlike the deaths or injuries of the police resisting the assault on the Capitol or the aftermath of the attack on the rule of law and American Democracy where hundreds of MAGA rioters were incarcerated, they have all become Trumpian collateral damage. Except, those folks who broke the law and stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6  have also been viewed as righteous “patriots” in a war against a tyranny of an elite minority who Trump has promised to pardon should he be elected to a second term.

Yet there was the conspicuous absence of any discussion of the kind of weapons used in the attempted assassination. Nor was there any conversation about the dire need for “gun reform” such as prohibiting the mass consumption or sales of “weapons of war” like the AR-style semiautomatic rifle owned by Thomas Mathew Crooks father. Who lent to his 20-year-old son on the day of the shootings for allegedly target practice as he had done several times before.

There were several other conspicuous issues omitted by all of the speakers – call these the missing elephants in the GOP’s political circus  —  that should be noted before I turn to the assassin’s likely motive. I am referring to the absence of any mention or discussion of abortion, women’s reproductive rights, and the former president’s three appointed justices to the Supreme Court.

Still, Mark Leibovich on site and reporting for The Atlantic stated that people were jarred by the assassination attempt. “But now that a few days have passed since the shooting, there’s a sense of divine intervention, like Trump has been touched by God. This seems to have stoked an almost spiritual allegiance to him” and an “even greater sense of confidence” and entitlement.

And this sense of electoral inevitability has been reinforced by the presidential election betting odds where Trump extended his position as the favorite after the assassination attempt just as the Republican National Convention was kicking off. These odds in the betting markets began “shifting right after the CNN debate between the president and the former president on June 27.

However, after Trump’s rambling, meandering, boring, bizarre, divisive, and narcissistic acceptance speech, assuming that the oddsmakers were watching the lethargic con man and gaslighter at work, then I have renewed confidence that by the time you read this the betting markets will have already begun shifting away from Trump and toward Biden’s endorsed replacement candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris..

What I especially like about this new likely matchup between Harris and Trump is that it pits a prosecutor who knows how to use the rules of the game versus a street-fighting criminal who will use every dirty trick in the book as well as a corrupt MAGA Supreme Court.

Speaking of which I also like how U.S. Senator Harris cross-examined Trump’s three appointed justices during their senate confirmation hearings. Plus Kamala is a woman and a person of color. What more could this democratic republic need or want from the next president of the United States?

In other words, I believe that the current betting favorite, Donald Trump, could very well become the third favorite presidential candidate to lose since 1866. I now believe that by the time people start early voting a couple of months from now that Trump will no longer be the favorite.

Before Thursday night and Trump’s embarrassing speech, Marcotte had reported that the Democratic voters were “the ones who are fretting, both from fear of backlash and opposition to political violence that Republicans do not share.” And while these feelings were already starting to wane by the end of the convention, I believe that the fear of backlash from the attempted assassination will all but disappear shortly.

Although the situations in Brazil and the United States are not identical, they are similar enough to make some comparisons. I am referring to the failed attempt on Jair Bolsonaro’s life from a stabbing wound to his back while on the campaign trail in 2018. At the time, many politicos in that country thought that his recovery period was an asset and served to insulate the far-right candidate from public scrutiny which they believed helped to propel him to the presidency in the fall of that year. Four years later he also lost his re-election and while hanging out at Mar-a-Lago with his autocratic buddy, his political party was engaging in another failed coup modeled after Trump’s. Six months later Bolsonaro faced legal accountability from an uncorrupted Electoral Court that barred him from “running for office again until 2030 after a panel of judges concluded that he abused his power and cast unfounded doubts on the country’s electronic voting system.”