Lies, Damn lies, and the temptation of Political Assassination (or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the doddering old fart)

A former President / current Presidential Candidate in an attempted assassination, and implications for such scenarios

TW: This article covers a violent crime. Reader discretion, please.

Special reporting on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump

(45th President of the United States Donald John Trump, seconds after surviving an attempted assassination)

‘Come on sir, we’re getting you to the bus’

Gorsh, Mickey. I didn’t really think I’d have to write something again so soon, but this 2024 Old Man Election season sure is heating up, fast. And not in ways I had on my bingo card, frankly.

After the spectacular mental meltdown of Joe Biden over the past 10 days, during an otherwise perfectly ordinary campaign stop in Butler, Penna., (a mere 33 miles away from my old stomping grounds of Pittsburgh, mind yinz) Donald John Trump, President of the US of A #45 and proverbial orange man bad was the victim of a most heinous crime - attempted political assassination. By the grace of God himself or plot armor (still unconfirmed if Trump is in god mode), he survived mostly unscathed. A little chunk of flesh from off the top of his ear, but according to himself doing ‘just fine’, aside from the mess to his hair (ed: this is our presumption).

Trump, in the immediate aftermath, was in such good spirits that he threw up a defiant fist and had only concerns for his shoes, taking just a brief moment to readjust his hair and connecting with the audience before being ushered away by US Secret Service into a waiting ambulance (USSS, herein).

Former President John Fitzgerald Kennedy could not be reached for comment, but we’ll get back to him soon. Hang with me.

So, dear reader - I really can’t believe that I watched that live, I thought he was being attacked by a swarm of bees at first glance because I had the sound turned down but my god, they dun tried it!

Eyewitness on the scene say that they were in the process of alerting authorities to a “man with a rifle” scaling across buildings, “crawling army-man style” up a roof face on properties adjacent to the airfield, mere seconds before the shots rang out.

As of time of writing, the collective news media (courtesy of WPXI, KDKA and WTAE hometown news + the BBC and others) agrees the death toll is 1 (unnamed/aged man, in crowd behind Trump, gunshot wound to the head, died immediately) with “at least” 2 more “critically injured”, per first responders on scene. A total of 10-11 were shots were recorded, 3 at Trump directly, 7 to 8 (presumably into the crowd) as Trump was collapsing behind the podium, being dogpiled by USSS.

A body was found on the roof of the building where the eyewitnesses had reported to police, presumed killed by USSS or other emergency responders. Fact-finding would follow with state/county and federal officers honing in on a nearby property, cordoning it off and refusing to answer questions to the press regarding their presence. His hidey hole got found. Hope he deleted his search history.

The Implications

In the aftermath, Trump was rushed to a Pittsburgh-area hospital and treated immediately, as were the other surviving victims. News media from all over began to crawl out of the woodwork, asking bystanders what they saw and posting their nascent app-based push notifications every few seconds. As is the biz.

From those corporate behemoths, you’d get notified that “Trump fell at a campaign rally” after “banging noises that sounded like gunshots”. To any layman’s ear this would scream “Trump got whacked”, but the fine folks at CNN and Deutsche Welle bided their words, danced around it and played with language as human life balanced in the wind. It was GROTESQUE. Trump had survived just barely, but someone had visibly been shot in the head on LIVE TELEVISION, AGAIN, just behind him, and they had almost decided not to acknowledge it…? For two hours, the media used every word it could to avoid saying “A mass shooting happened at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania”.

It was the strangest thing I have seen since we all decided that vaccines don’t need to provide sterilizing immunity, or that Ukrainian Nazis aren’t really Ukrainian Nazis. The media tried a fast one yet again and EVERYONE was so disgusted (save for a few jokesters doing memes) that it was almost immediate and in unison - disavow and be disgusted at it. You can’t support any such heinous act against human life, especially a politician campaigning for federal office.

In 2016, when British Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered in cold blood during a constituent meet-and-greet event, the world was shocked. It was mortified. The killer was immediately abhorred. But for some reason, because Donald Trump was involved, the media decided to… hedge its bets and wait until told otherwise, which is a strange thing to do in such an obvious situation.

It was so surreal, surely at first even I was stunned and confused until I saw 8 black suits running at Trump to tackle him. It was obvious at that moment there was a security breach, a GIGANTIC one, and that there had been a mass shooting/mass casualty event. For large media institutions to dance around such an obvious notion is disgusting, but we expect nothing less.

The implications are greater than the media, though. Think for a moment what potentially could have unfolded had Trump genuinely been hurt or killed? You joke about civil wars, that sure would be the type of thing to turn MAGA into ANTIFA on meth. They would be rioting in every street, and rightfully so. So, be thankful he lived, but there’s still some other big implications to go over.

The shooter’s choice of weapon I think will be a factor in these events, and I think Trump may end up taking a more nuanced stance on gun control in life following his loss at the Supreme Court recently re: bump stocks. I think a bump stock might even be involved as eyewitnesses speculated it “looked like an AR-15 style rifle”, but I/they could be wrong, and I/they could be talking shit. Who knows - we’ll find out in the coming days I’m sure.

As for Trump the candidate, this didn’t kill him, so it only made him stronger - he will likely see a considerable increase in sympathetic voters, in light of Elon “Pedo Guy” Musk’s public endorsement as the event unfolded, and especially in light of his performance in the middle of a mass shooting.

He was cool, calm and collected, even when he had bullets whizzing past his head. You can’t ask for better publicity than that. He even took time to join the crowd in a chant of “USA, USA, USA”. Fuck George Clooney and Tom Cruise, this is the kind of publicity and brand loyalty that you really can’t buy. No idiot would let a marksman take out a chunk of his ear and one of his fan’s heads off before the marksman dies on a roof at the hands of police. That’s way too much paperwork and hassle to go through, unless you’re…

The CIA

(Via Rowdy Peasant comics)

Trump is no stranger to the Deep State. Trump famously had a public spat with them, culminating in his attempted impeachment for withholding Congressionally approved and doled out monies to Ukraine. Trump has already made no secret that he is not going to allow the foreign policy of neoconservatives like Lindsey Graham and John Bolton go unchecked (all the time, they can have their ways sometimes).

I don’t like to speculate, but it sure seems like the deep state done tried to kill Trump to save Zelensky and stick it to Putin again. That’s the only answer I can come to.

I’ve seen unconfirmed reports of the shooter’s identity and assignations to left-leaning causes, but this has not been confirmed anywhere outside of a few “grumpy grandpa reposting AI-generated shit that confounded him again” groups. I wouldn’t be surprised if true though, the CIA loves using the left wing as an enemy, and giving power to the right wing.

Stay with me, this isn’t a bash fest on left v right, it’s so much more than that. This goes to the root cause of our country’s most pressing ill.

JFK was the original cold warrior and they still killed him because he wasn’t bellicose enough for their liking, as bellicose belligerence breeds global instability, and they thrive on instability. If things are ordinary, and nothing’s scary, and you have no free floating anxiety - they can’t make money, or make influence, or get their way so easily.

At the most recent debate, Trump made two points that are wholly incompatible with the Deep State’s agenda:

1. He is open to an Independent Palestinian state, though he would “need to see the plan before agreeing”. (Goes against the entire point of Israel)

2. Is not interested in hostility with Russia, as an oligarch himself he understands ‘money makes the world go round’. (Goes against NATO)

And in doing so, he was (I posit) put on the CIA’s most wanted list. He had to go - fuck demented Joe, this guy was endangering their entire little game.

In 2015-16 when Trump spoke of “pulling out of Afghanistan” and the “deep state”, I was quite skeptical because I knew exactly what he was referring to. I just thought the guy was just talking shit. And then.. I sat back and watched as neoconservatives invaded his administration, continuing bad wars from the Obama era, trying to stir shit up in LatAm/S. America, starting shit with China et al., and I was unimpressed.

One of the biggest bones of contention I had at the time is that Trump, in his promises only kept some of them. Such as his commitment to releasing the John F. Kennedy files, another topic wholly incompatible with the CIA - and I’m sure even more distasteful now in light of current events. But I think that’s precisely what Trump ought to do with his first 100 days: Ensure the total release of those files completely before the 100 days are over. It’s time.

But.. I also took exception with him allowing the same neoconservatives that he had spent an entire campaign cycle shitting on into his cabinet. Men like John Bolton.

I just hope Trump doesn’t make the same mistakes twice, because the CIA doesn’t miss twice. In a recent email, the candidate said simply “I WILL NEVER SURRENDER”, and signed with a portrait. A stunning rebuke given his performance.

Why political assassinations are bad for democracy (and why they may be tempting anyways)

Look, I get the idea of ‘getting someone out of the picture’. I’ve seen plenty of Hollywood movies and Sopranos re-runs, but I also stayed awake long enough through them to know that “it always comes out in the laundry”. No good (read: terrible) deed goes unpunished. No matter how morally justified one feels or how good the idea sounds or what they may have done, killing another person is always bad and ends in tragedy for everyone. Bad bad bad bad bad bad. Don’t do that.

I don’t want to patronize too much, but it should be obvious why political assassination isn’t a valid option in a world where human life is meant to be treasured and valued, even if the person is hated by every other person on the planet. Abhor the sin, love the sinner. Hate the politics, respect the politician.

Hitler was a coward, and, according to history books, wasn’t assassinated - the bombing attempt at the Reichstag only further cemented his power - but died by his own hand; in a bunker, surrounded by allied and soviet troops, as Berlin fell, shortly after killing his wife and dog.

Hitler escaped punishment through cowardly suicide, and just like suicide, political assassination also robs the public of due justice. The idea is not to kill in the name of your idea or to kill someone because you think they are a danger, because that only begets more death. The idea is to prove the person so wrong as to be incompatible with the culture.

The correct pathway is to offer a meaningful alternative to a bad idea, not to kill the guy who suggests the bad idea.

I am no fan of Donald Trump, I didn’t care for him during his Apprentice days and I don’t care for him now. I was by far and away very critical of his presidency. I’m not MAGA, but never would I suggest that someone kill the bastard. He’s so old that his arteries are going to do that soon enough, frankly. And that same goes for Biden, or any other politician I may dislike or disagree with in the USA or abroad.

Beat them at the ballot box, don’t beat them to death with a rock.

Civility

In the immediate hours following the tragic mass shooting, the former President Jimmy Carter “Carter Center” issued a statement, putting it simply.

“The Carter Center condemns the violence that took place at former President Trump’s campaign rally in Pennsylvania. While we don’t know all the facts, we do know that all Americans should be able to gather peaceably without fear of violence. Our thoughts are with President Trump and all those affected by this horrific act, and we call on all Americans to embrace civility in our democratic processes.”

You really don’t need to be partisan in this moment. It’s okay to just condemn a terrible criminal act. You don’t need to like someone to respect their victimhood, or to show basic decorum. You may feel that a candidate is the worst person on the planet, but you show dissatisfaction with respect, because you aren’t just showing respect to a candidate. You’re showing respect to the people behind the campaign, the voters in your neighborhood, your friends and family. We’re all human beings, flawed and terrible.

In 2015-16 as Trump was bombastically campaigning as the media’s Pied Piper for Hillary Clinton, a lack of civility was not the issue - contrary to media bloviation at the time.

Trump’s disrespectful and bellicose mannerism was, simply put, dirty politics - not that the Clintons had been unfamiliar with such things, but it was seen as “the death of democracy” because Trump didn’t just let Hillary Clinton walk all over him and say “Thank you ma’am, may I have another?” Preferring instead a penchant for sending endless mean tweets.

Of course, the damage to “democracy” was done long before Twitter even existed - violence at political rallies had been a flash point from before the Civil Rights era well through the AIDS crisis and into more modern eras. Political assassinations in the USA against sitting politicians and Presidents are not unheard of.

Civility is something useful to ask for if one wants complacency and compliance and status quo. It’s an unlikely thing to receive from a culture fostered in violence itself, pumped full of guns and violent imagery, feeling isolated and anxious.

Trump Wins (probably)

There’s really no easy way to put this, but I think the most likely outcome of this is that Donald Trump will have his second term, if he can make it there. 

Sources close to Trump say this style of mass shooting event is one he has feared since his start in 2015. Now that it’s out of the way - what’s left to fear, but fear itself?

I will of course write more as the election progresses, but I think the vote was held tonight and Trump won in a landslide. And I’m not sure how that bodes for anything else in life, but at least he’s not dead - because the GOP has *NOTHING* without him.

In the meantime, I think this is a great call to action for RFK Jr and other candidates, such as Jill Stein and Cornel West. I think we as taxpayers should be providing USSS security details to *all* presidential candidates, as just protecting the big 2 corporate candidates speaks to special privilege.

RFK Jr has already had credible threats against his life, and it’s only a matter of time until that card gets punched. I don’t always like Bobby Jr BUT I do want to see him protected and healthy, long-lived in his advocacy. I don’t want to watch him die, either.

I think the fact that candidates need such protection is already crazy enough, but if it needs to exist it needs to be made more available to high-risk targets who are candidates for the highest level of office in our country, no matter how far fetched.

And frankly, after today? The USSS needs to mark POTUS podium in a 200m radius on a map and sweep everything in it, and have service members everywhere possible in the circle (especially easily accessed clear line-of-sight vantage points!!!) There clearly weren’t enough agents to go around today, and it showed. Someone clearly missed that roof just behind the bleachers or didn’t think it would matter - bad call either way.

Editor’s thoughts:

I’m going to end here because it’s already too many words for such an immediate piece, and I’m sure much more will be said in the coming days, years, and generations.

This will be an event that lives in infamy, much like the failed attack on Reagan or the successful attack on JFK. Not as funny as sandals being thrown at George W Bush, and certainly not as light-hearted. Nor as dramatic as Lincon’s assassination in Ford Theater. Something far more sinister and malicious. Something… nebulous.

In the meantime I’ll be sure to write more as it unfolds, I’d like the next piece to be something else entirely but who knows, the CIA might leak some juicy deets about the claimed shooter, Trump might die from an ear lobe infection - a lot can happen! So stay tuned and please, just try to be civil to each other - even if you really fucking hate each other.

Please. Because the alternative is a hell of a lot more tragic, and I can’t bare to see any more, and frankly I’m already tired of writing about shootings.

My condolences to the family of the victim at the event, and my best well wishes to the surviving victims receiving care in Pittsburgh hospitals.