CW: Graphic descriptions of violence
A gunshot and we see the former president fall, clutching the side of his head. In the tense minute following, Trump’s stage mic betrays the nervous, clambering exclamations of the Secret Service agents rushing to shield him – plus Trump’s irritated demands to let him get his shoes back on! A raised fist, drips of blood, cheers of triumph.
Within minutes, AP circulated the picture for the history books. Trump, hollering, fist up, flag in shot. It’s stirring, Romantic even. As if by Delacroix, “Trump Leading the People”. It is a startling piece of political drama, distracted only by our confusion at how, amidst it all, he managed to lose his shoes.
This drama, of course, was no fiction. The threat to Trump was real – there’s no suggestion of foul play. In any case, I suppose Trump wouldn’t orchestrate being pictured, hair disfigured, falling into the arms of five taller men. This is theatre as much as an election debate is theatre – a real contest, sure, but involving entertainers. Perhaps a British eye is attuned to the drama of it: a gunshot, to most of us, belongs inherently to the stage and screen. Certainly, after the grey sobriety of our most recent election, the star-spangled-pomp of any Republican rally is drama. Importantly, though, this drama may have just won Trump the election. Why? Because it means something special to shoot a populist.
The populist must convince us that our society is in conflict. A flux tussle between the elite and the masses, where one prophet emerges as a straight-talking saviour of the subjugated. In these terms, the populist offers a one-shot deal. Trump never allowed the media or the public to get a sense of this movement as belonging to anyone but him, filtering through disciples furiously in brazen executive sackings. Mike Pence, Trump’s four-year Vice President (and the closest he came to an heir), left the Capitol to Trump’s supporters hoisting gallows for his hanging. This drama is allowed but one character—the very prophet of his own Republican movement. The seeds of discord are already sewn between Trump and his current running-mate; JD Vance’s private thoughts on the former President are well documented. To a base of devout Republicans, Trump’s trials, vilification, and attempted assassination become the perfect narrative for a God-chosen hero eluding the best efforts of the Democrat moral enemy to stop him. A gunshot alerted voters to all they stood to lose.
Setting is important here too. Trump’s rallies are carnival in character. No zealots short of a church service, with merchandise, singing, and superfans preaching God, Guns, and Trump. And then a gunshot. I expect Trump to keep it sombre for weeks: old talk of unity, solidarity, and overcoming injustice. Placing himself as not merely the victim of this harm, but the honest hearth around which American democracy can be restored. It’s the perfect moral vindication to follow his recent legal triumph in the Florida courts. Trump’s lot was once angry and vitriolic, now they’re convalescent, and soon they’ll have political righteousness on their side.
The Democrats now find themselves unable to pin Trump down as a threat to their democracy. This was the central claim, the very weight behind the fragile case that the ailing Biden still held against an assertive Trump campaign. The day after the assassination attempt, the Democrats pulled $50 million of attack ad funding, intending to ‘lower the temperature’ of the debate. But after the GOP revealed their platform, Americans have no reason to believe that the temperature of the threat against them has been lowered too.
Kamala Harris offers Democrats some ground for hope. A litigious, forensic style trained in her legal background equips her to pin down the elusive Trump defence. She is animated and memorable, but with a capacity for seriousness. This is the time for seriousness, too. The Pennsylvania rally will prove the most significant moment in modern American politics. Now, it looks likely that Trump will win, and the costs of his victory remain unspeakably large.
Death doesn’t fit into democratic politics. The act of assassination is inherited from an age of Kings, Queens, and heirs, where legitimacy was derived directly from the very fact of living. We imagine democracy as a fair contest in a game of approval. A threat to life has no natural place where legitimacy is found independently of merely living. Yet, democracy is increasingly struck by instances of violence against representatives. We remember the recent deaths of two British MPs: Jo Cox’s murder in 2016, and David Amess’s in 2021. Between 2020 and 2022, candidates running for House and Senate offices increased campaign spending on security by more than 500 percent. We’re confronted with lethal violence in our democracy as we have never been before.
The danger here is twofold. Democracy faces a threat from populists, and a threat from those who seek to rob populists of their right to stand. One breeds the other: a populist who survives a shooting emerges more popular than ever, and the bigger the threat that the populist poses, the more likely they are to suffer political violence. When democracy becomes violent, we must learn how to refocus on the debate at hand, or else risk giving up vital ground we can’t afford to lose.