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“Former President Donald Trump was the target of an apparent assassination attempt Saturday at a Pennsylvania rally, days before he was to accept the Republican nomination for a third time. A barrage of gunfire set off panic, and a bloodied Trump, who said he was shot in the ear, was surrounded by Secret Service and hurried to his SUV as he pumped his fist in a show of defiance.” AP News
“The FBI said the shooter, who is dead, was identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania… Crooks' family is cooperating with investigators, but his motive remains unclear, according to a senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the matter.” NBC News
Both sides condemn political violence:
“The nation escaped an unspeakable tragedy that would have been profoundly destabilizing for the country by perhaps a few centimeters. As it is, what happened in Butler, Pa., is godawful enough. A gunman tried to assassinate former president Donald Trump and grazed his ear with a bullet, while killing one rally-goer and seriously injuring others. This was a heinous act of violence and an attack on American democracy…
“If the bullet that wounded Trump had traveled a slightly different path, we would have witnessed earlier this evening one of the most horrifying events in American history. It would have deepened the sense of crisis gripping our country and would have had unforeseeable consequences, none of them good. Sometimes the course of history depends on margins just that small.”
The Editors, National Review
“There is much we don’t know yet about the gunman and the shooting, which is being investigated as an attempted assassination. But this much is clear: Any attempt to resolve an election through violence is abhorrent. Violence is antithetical to democracy. Ballots, not bullets, should always be the means by which Americans work through their differences…
“Democracy requires partisans to accept that the process is more important than the results. Even before Saturday’s events, there were worrying signs that many Americans are failing that essential test. In a survey conducted last month by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, 10 percent of respondents agreed that the use of force was justified to prevent Mr. Trump from becoming president, and 7 percent said the use of force was justified to return Mr. Trump to the presidency… The attack on Saturday was a tragedy. The challenge now confronting Americans is to prevent this moment from becoming the beginning of a greater tragedy.”
Editorial Board, New York Times
Other opinions below.
“When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked… 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.’…
“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. Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well.”
David Frum, The Atlantic
“It is not Trump’s fault that someone tried to kill him. It is absolutely his fault that it has immediately set off a widespread fear of reprisals and chaos… ‘Today is not just some isolated incident,’ [Republican senator J.D. Vance] wrote. ‘The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.’ This is not true at all…
“Biden has not said Trump must be ‘stopped at all costs.’ He has said Trump must be stopped through a free and fair election. The distinction Vance elided is not trivial… Trump and his allies have preemptively stated that restoring him to power is the only legitimate outcome of the election. He has repeatedly declined to accept the possibility that he could legitimately lose in 2024… The country is lucky Trump survived. And now we must protect the system from him.”
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
“For nearly a decade, Democrats have been ratcheting up the rhetoric and marching the nation towards this political violence. In 2018, Rep. Maxine Waters told supporters in an unhinged rant to publicly harass Trump administration members… More recently in this election cycle, former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill went on MSNBC to say, and I am not making this up, that Trump is not only similar to Hitler and Mussolini, but more dangerous…
“The United States was founded on the very belief that it is moral to kill human beings to rid the citizenry of tyranny and dictatorship. That is why we don’t accuse our fellow citizens of such things lightly, unless it is Donald Trump or a guy in a red MAGA hat…
“If any good can come of this horrible tragedy that left a man just doing his civic duty at a political rally dead and two injured, it should be that Democrats understand this is not tenable, that they are still inviting more and more violence.”
David Marcus, Fox News
“The iconic photograph of a defiant and courageous Trump getting up after being shot and still potentially under fire showed just exactly why he resonates with people. Pundits and opponents have scoffed at his indefatigability as some kind of a show, but Trump literally proved it under fire last night. And in a political environment where phony bluster and PR spin has created deep cynicism about our institutions, Trump's personal courage matters…
“[There] are choices we all have to make. In the face of wickedness and evil in any context, do we hug the ground and find a corner into which to crawl and protect ourselves out of very rational and understandable fear? Do we panic and retaliate blindly and stupidly, out of anger and fear, another impulse that feeds wickedness and evil? Or if we are still able, do we choose to stand defiant, shake our fist into its face, and yell ‘Fight!’ and demonstrate what character and faith looks like as an example to all? Trump made his choice last night.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
