The Political Fallout from the Trump Assassination Attempt

I t’s awful to think about politics in the face of a tragic shooting that resulted in one death, multiple injuries, and the near-assassination of a former president and soon-to-be Republican nominee, Donald Trump. With that said, the attempted assassination of a major political figure is inherently a political act — whatever motivated the shooter — so it seems remiss to not discuss how it could affect the election.

Some were pointing at Trump’s remarkable reaction — bloodied, defiant, and raising his fist to the crowd a minute after getting shot — and saying it would automatically win him the election. Maybe, but it’s hard to predict. Ronald Reagan famously received a huge bump in polls from surviving his assassination, while Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts in one month in 1975, and it didn’t lead to higher approval or result in his reelection. Both of those incidents occurred during much different eras with much different context and involving much different political figures. Thus far, public opinion in this election has been remarkably resilient — Trump’s conviction and President Biden’s disastrous debate performance seem to have only altered the race by a few points — so we don’t know if even something of the magnitude of an attempted assassination on live television is going to result in a big change in polls.

That said, it certainly changes the political calculations. One of the biggest open questions is how the Trump news affects efforts to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee. I can imagine the conversation moving in both directions. The instantly iconic image of a bloodied Trump raising his fist with the American flag in the background projects strength in a way that reinforces the contrast with the increasingly frail-looking Biden — and could add even more urgency to the search for a replacement. But perhaps in the wake of the first assassination attempt of a president or presidential candidate in decades, the “Dump Biden” Democrats may have lost their appetite for introducing more chaos to this presidential election. At the very minimum, it should freeze the effort to oust Biden for a few days — and the more time that passes, the harder it is to replace him.

It’s also important to consider the way in which Democrats will prosecute their case against Trump from this point forward, no matter who is leading their ticket. One of the reasons that Democrats want to replace Biden is that they believe somebody younger would be able to go after Trump with more vigor. Biden, in trying to make his case to donors for why he’s staying in the race, said on a Monday call, “So we’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.” At a Friday rally in Detroit, he delivered a series of blistering attacks on Trump and received a “that’s more like it” reaction from the online Left.

I’m not saying attacks on Trump will go away in the wake of the shooting. The fact that he survived an assassination attempt with aplomb doesn’t erase his record up to that point, and shouldn’t prevent Democrats from making their case against him and his policies. But at the same time, one does wonder if they will be forced to turn down the level of vitriol and fearmongering about Trump and, if so, how that affects their strategy going into the closing months of the race.

Right now, there is a frenzied effort to try and understand the politics of the shooter. A number of liberals are pointing to evidence that he was a registered Republican to try and demonstrate this was somehow right-wing-on-right-wing violence, while a small donation to a progressive PAC points in the other direction. As somebody who has on many occasions registered as a Democrat when living in a blue area so I could vote for the least bad Democrat in a primary, the fact that somebody registered as a Republican in rural Pennsylvania does not tell me any more than his $15 donation to a progressive PAC.

While it will obviously make a difference to the political debate if the shooter turns out to be, say, a progressive with an online footprint echoing Democratic talking points about a Trump second term ushering in a dictatorship, or a random crank with a heterodox political history, at the end of the day, it won’t alter the big picture. That is, Trump can now point to himself as a victim of political violence, who is only standing because a bullet missed him by the smallest of margins, which turns on its head the effort to portray Trump as the central instigator of political violence in America.

There is a media effort to condemn Republicans who are trying to blame Democratic rhetoric for the shooting that is being pursued with the same ferocity as past media efforts to blame Republican rhetoric for shootings. Remember the attacks on Sarah Palin for a political target map that included Gabby Giffords’s district as a pickup opportunity nearly a year before she was shot? What if Mitt Romney or any other Republican official had said, days before the shooting, “It’s time to put Gabby Giffords in the bull’s-eye?” Would Democrats and their friends in the media be showing the same restraint as they are now calling on Republicans to observe?

My friend and former colleague Quin Hillyer cautioned, “Anybody who tries to spread blame (beyond the individual shooter) for today’s assassination attempt is beneath contempt — vile, despicable, asinine.” Quin is a thoroughly decent person who longs for a return to a more decent time in American politics, and I totally sympathize with his basic sentiment. But at the same time, I believe this view is kind of like the argument that elections have consequences and thus the default should be for presidents to get their cabinet and judicial picks confirmed, even if the other party controls the Senate. That is, it is a relic of an era that no longer exists in which both political sides observed a certain comity.

When a Bernie Sanders supporter shot up Republicans practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game in 2017, resulting in multiple injuries including to then–House majority whip Steve Scalise, Paul Ryan was criticized from his right for coming together with Nancy Pelosi in a show of unity, rather than talking about left-wing violence in the same way that Democrats talk about right-wing violence. That’s why I expect Republicans to amplify efforts to blame Democratic rhetoric for the Trump assassination attempt, no matter what we learn about the shooter. Since they know that if somebody nearly killed Biden, Democrats would not seek to turn down the temperature and would instead seek to blame Trump, they won’t unilaterally disarm politically here.

This week, all the focus will shift to Milwaukee and to Trump’s pick for vice president, a decision that carries added weight now that we have a reminder of how quickly that person could be asked to take over.