President Biden has pulled as much as possible of his political ads from the media in the belief that it is the wrong time to continue attacking Mr. Trump. But all eyes and ears are focused on the assassination attempt against Donald Trump this weekend. So what else is there to talk about? And maybe this is the right time to point out that, even if there is violence coming from both sides, Mr. Trump has had a hand in fanning it. He views the most violent elements in America as his supporters. So he refused to condemn the violence in Charlottesville. And he sat in his office watching televised images of his supporters attacking the U.S, Capital, trying to interfere with a constitutionally required process, chasing and threatening unarmed representatives with violence and attacking the Capitol Police. But those were his people so he refused to stop their attack.
It is often said that those who live by the sword die by the sword. Trump was lucky – a bullet merely grazed his ear. I remember standing with a group of faculty on my college campus listening to radio reports of the shooting of President John F. Kennedy. I expressed skepticism that he could survive a shot in the head. One of the faculty members said Kennedy might just have been grazed. He was not so lucky. But at a distance of hundreds of yards there was a luck factor, both in Trump’s survival and in the death and injury of several members of the crowd. And of course the weapon of choice was an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle, the very type of weapon Democrats have been trying to ban, Republicans keep defending while the Trump’s Court insists semi-automatic weapons are constitutionally protected.
So, although we feel some sympathy for Trump and want him to recover fully, this attempt is yet another example of why Mr. Trump should never again enter the White House. Because he had a hand in fanning the flames, in giving presidential blessing to violence, I add together all violence on both sides of the political aisle and heap it all at Trump’s door. This man is a danger to the peace and good order of the American republic, to law and order in our country.
And I want to extend my admiration to the late fire chief who paid with his life when he threw himself over his family to protect them, to the Secret Service who didn’t hesitate to surround and pull Trump off the stand to safety, and my sympathies to the many terrified by the lethal violence that is becoming all too common in America.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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