The Public's Response to Trump's Assassination Attempt A Sign of Moral Crisis

Trump survived an assassination attempt but it's like it never happened. While the media instantly buried it, many Americans desperately wished it'd been successful.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a month since the attempted assassination on the former President Donald Trump’s life. Since that sordid event, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned from her post following a grilling by the congressional committee due to blatant “security failures.” President Joe Biden has dropped out of the presidential race mere days after making it clear that he was fit to run for reelection. Kamala Harris has been shoe-horned onto the main stage as the Democratic Party nominee. And new details are still emerging about how the former President Donald Trump was just a hair away from being murdered in cold blood, live on television. Amidst all of these groundbreaking events, the gravest of which is the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, the public’s response has been most concerning in its indifference and callousness.

The nonchalant attitude of Americans toward a political assassination attempt says a lot about the degree to which Americans have been demoralized, and how severely detached from reality they’ve become. Perhaps political and ideological subservience is to blame. Or perhaps the manufacturing of public opinion at break-neck speed is the culprit, strategically leaving little room or time for the public to engage with whatever it is they are witnessing in real time. Before the public has grasped what it means for a presidential candidate to have been nearly assassinated in broad daylight, they’re distracted with the announcement that the incumbent president is stepping down. And before they’ve fully grasped the ramifications of that event, they’re immediately recruited to sound the horns and beat the drums for the newly selected presidential candidate. All of this happening within the span of a couple weeks. Disorienting, undoubtedly. But it shouldn’t be lost on people that this is precisely the desired outcome by the political institutions who employ this tactical approach; it’s a carefully designed process orchestrated to overwhelm the public and to deter any sense-making.

Many Americans, most noticeably on the Left, have become totally desensitized and morally bankrupt. They've either cognitively checked out or become more entrenched in their ideological views. Nothing shakes them to the core. Very little gives them pause. They do not seem remotely concerned about atrocities playing out on the global or national stage if they are not strategically positioned to benefit from them.

In the past month alone, nothing has made this clearer than the moments that followed the news of the former president Trump coming uncomfortably close to being assassinated on live TV. Across social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Substack, etc.), from the average Democratic Party loyalists to Hollywood celebrities and the Washington DC types, unsettling and depraved posts poured in online expressing deep disappointment that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had missed his mark. Many made pleas online begging that whoever the next shooter is, should have better aim. Others, like Jaqueline Warsaw, a “diehard Democrat” and staffer for Congressman Bennie Thompson, while claiming to not “condone violence,” posted to Facebook wishing that Crooks had gotten “some shooting lessons” before embarking on an attempt on the former President’s life. Actor Jack Black’s Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Glass shared similar sentiments when he was asked to make a birthday wish on stage while on tour in Australia, and he replied saying “Don’t miss Trump next time.”

Even in overheard conversations, many have wished that the shooter had been a better marksman to “do us all a favor by taking him out.” The callousness is particularly jarring. The unflinching thirst for death, bloodshed, coldblooded murder of a presidential candidate, simply because he represents an oppositional political faction to the Democratic Party. It is a level of depravity unlike any we’ve seen since the height of Covid when media pundits, so-called healthcare specialists, government officials, the president (Biden), and Left-leaning Americans advocated for the quarantine, imprisonment, refusal of healthcare, excommunication from public life, and other such vile prescriptions for citizens who chose to opt out of partaking in an experimental drug, what is now perhaps the greatest case of medical malpractice in the world. It is a clear sign that the American public have been demoralized to a point of no return. We are at the final stretch of the slippery slope, where morality is lost, concern for humanity is an afterthought, crisis is commonplace, and real authoritarianism takes hold.

If Americans are willing to cheer and advocate for the tactical killing of their political party’s oppositional candidate, there’s no telling what they will endorse next, and the dangers that will present to the general populace. Will they endorse the imprisonment of neighbors for having a sign on the front lawn that supports their favorite political candidate? The unlawful arrest of people who think differently? The weaponization of the intelligence agencies to totally eliminate so-called American “extremist groups” whose crimes happen to be holding an opposing political and ideological worldview?

There is no map to navigate a society out of collapse once it’s lost its moral compass. History has left us enough clues to know that we are in uncharted territory. As long as people can justify to themselves that their actions are necessary for the safekeeping of society, and the world at large, they will willingly cross any and all boundaries to that end, no matter how inhumane or destructive (see Communists, among others). They will easily condone unlawful imprisonment, unjust punishment, coercive medical interventions, massacres, assassination, genocide, if they believe that it is their fundamental duty to make the world a safer place.

Trump, since 2016, has been carefully branded by the corporate media as an unassailable villain. His presence in politics made synonymous with the second coming of Hitler, an authoritarian figure, a tyrannical ruler. A quick glance at how the world’s largest publications depict him to the public makes this undoubtedly clear (see below). The Democratic Party has long been well aware that to combat Trump’s rise to power again, they would have to create such a unique atmosphere that both the Left and the “Never Trump” movement to the Right could agree on: the sentiment that no action would be too far to prevent Trump’s ascent back to the Oval office. With that stage set and the media narratives to support it green-lit, of course Trump’s assassination becomes justifiable. By wishing for a Trump’s assassination, the media, the political insiders, and everyday Americans believe they are doing something noble. They believe they are “saving democracy” from a despot, as they so often regurgitate, to mask the fact that they are installing their own uniquely despotic figure. To them, championing the assassination of a detestable political candidate is the truest expression of their compassion. They believe they are upholding their moral principles, when in fact they are desecrating it.

In a way, what we are witnessing is a version of the well known ethical thought experiment of “Killing Baby Hitler” in order to prevent a series of future catastrophes. In this scenario, however, there is no need to hypothetically travel back in time to weigh the benefits and costs of committing infanticide. Since many, today, have been conditioned to believe that Trump is Hitler in real time, why wouldn’t they advocate for what they have always ruminated and fantasized about all these years: killing a Hitlerian figure?

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi spoke about this idea when he addressed the downfall of traditional journalism a few years back. To subvert Trump, and to avoid being skewered by their peers for supporting Trump, Left-leaning journalists from the most prestigious publications in the world were willing to engage in the most egregious violations of journalistic ethics. To avoid covering Trump objectively, they willingly reported untruthfully, lied by omission, and often knowingly mischaracterized his actions and words to craft the image they needed the public to have of him. To these journalists, that was the honorable and moral thing to do — to print lies with the goal of assassinating Trump’s character rather than print objective truths that could have elevated his stature in the public’s eye.

Evidently, the country is in a moral crisis. Political assassination attempts that should elicit empathy, a cause for concern, or the quelling of divisive rhetoric are instead cheered on by political sycophants. Democratic coups by Party elites are a nothing-burgher to the voting public. Politicians give bipartisan funding and standing ovations to the leader of a country committing a genocide. In a normal and functioning society, none of these would be happening. But we don’t live in a normal or functioning society. We haven’t for some time.

Note From the Author: It should go without saying that you are free to despise politicians as much as you’d like. In fact, I despise them ALL. But at no point should anyone be advocating for the assassination of politicians because you simply do not like their politics or what they stand for. There are far better and civil ways to show your distaste for politicians.

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