When Eric Trump said, “My father is running out of lives here,” it served not only as an expression of concern for a potential cataclysm that would affect his family but as a warning that the violence creeping into politics and the frequency of threats might upend the election altogether. In two months, there have been two assassination attempts against former President and now presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The first attempt came on July 13 by Thomas Matthew Crooks, a bright, quiet 20-year-old who had recently graduated with an associate degree. His motives remain uncertain, but he conducted searches for public appearances of a variety of political and governmental figures leading up to his attempt and death.

Crooks attempted to join his high school’s rifle team, but they rejected him. Years later, he climbed up a building and crouched on the roof, where several people noticed him before his assassination attempt. A split second before Crooks fired his first shot, Trump was saved by a turn of his head as he referred a graph behind him just as the first bullet nicked his ear in one of eight shots taken. Soon after that, police killed Crooks with a single sniper shot.

A mere two months later, on September 15, Ryan Wesley Routh was chased and then captured after a Secret Service agent noticed a gun barrel sticking through a chain link fence as Trump golfed at one of his courses. Routh had been a rebel in search of a cause, with much of the last few years ineffectually presenting himself as an ally to Ukraine and coordinator of foreign recruits. Souring on Ukraine, he then pivoted to Taiwan, claiming on Twitter last year that he could supply thousands of “economical NATO trained Afghan soldiers to help defend Taiwan” as part of a foreign defense force. His other positions included pro-Palestinian and anti-China rants in his self-published book.

A restless and disturbed soul, he sought meaning in his life. “I would tremendously enjoy the invitation to join any monumental worthy cause to bring about real change in our world,” according to Routh’s LinkedIn profile. “I am certainly free to relocate to any remote location on the planet that might render the most positive impact.”

The repercussions

The media coverage, President Joe Biden’s statement and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’s statement on the attempt focused on the Secret Service and its funding. Admittedly, more robust Secret Service protection is now necessary for presidential candidates, but recruiting, training and deploying Secret Service resources in the brief weeks before the election will be a serious strain on resources if not impossible. Little addressed underlying causes and the possible consequences that would have followed had the assailant been successful. 

For starters, how would an election proceed? At this post-convention point, party rules allow the Republican National Committee (RNC) to select a new candidate. How, then, would that new candidate, so near election day, become familiar to voters or develop and explain policies? How would he or she make a pitch to voters? Simple answer: the task would be impossible. The result would be the most partisan election ever, with impulse buys right and left to determine the leader of the free world.

As though that weren’t bad enough, a Harris win by a sizable margin after a neck-and-neck race against Trump would be viewed as wholly illegitimate by many. Having secured no votes in the primary from her party and with the opposing candidate dead weeks before the election, she would have no mandate to govern, and half the country would see her as effectively unsanctioned. Some would feel her rhetoric precipitated the murder. The mood in America would be raucous. 

A new sotto voce election theme would arise: kill the other candidate close enough to the election and you have a better chance of winning. Death threats to Harris would be overwhelming. Political discourse would be the least of our worries. Democrats emphasize that democracy is on the ticket, but the country would erupt if either candidate were killed and democracy were entirely removed from the ticket.

The causes

Trump blames the rhetoric of Harris and others, and the left has indeed long disparaged him as a threat to democracy itself, often styled possessively as “our democracy.” For a period, “threat to democracy” was the albatross Biden and then Harris hung around his neck and hoped would carry them to victory. On January 5, 2024, Biden said, “We’re living in an era where a determined minority is doing everything in its power to try to destroy our democracy for their own agenda.” On July 3, a mere 10 days before the first assassination attempt, Harris posted on her Facebook and Instagram page, “It’s simple: Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms. With your vote, we will stop him this November.” 

By decrying Trump as the end of America, it’s not difficult to understand how those seeking a cause might find appeal in the immortalizing notion of the man (in these cases) who single-handedly saved the republic.

Meanwhile, the justification for violence to achieve social or political ends has become the norm. Everyone recalls the January 6 riot, which elicits no lack of disgust in yours truly, but the institutions held. The mobsters came nowhere near altering the course of the election, yet the coverage continues to this day. Almost no one reported on three days of riots in May of 2020 that saw 60 Secret Service agents injured near the White House during George Floyd protests. Even where the event was reported, Trump was to blame. The Guardian quickly pointed out in its subheading, “Trump has inflamed tensions as protests rage across the US,” before noting, “the unrest has come to Donald Trump’s doorstep.” Few mentioned the broken bones sustained by the Secret Service or that the “protesters flung rocks, urine and alcohol at them.” Political violence is not the exclusive domain of one party, and it needs to end across the board.

The normalization of political violence

Politicians are no better in their choice of words. Many use wild language and then condemn the violence as though it were a get-out-of-jail-free card. They toe the line, something happens, they say something like “political violence has no place in America,” and claim they have “distanced themselves” from what they incite. In such cases, I feel people have become like Ricky Bobby, thinking the phrase “with all due respect” washes everything away and, in this case, entitles them to threaten others.

Such incendiary, hyperbolic language is bound to elicit passion in some and murderous psychosis in others. It was a notable low point when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told conservative Justices of the Supreme Court, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Justices have life tenure. What was going to “hit” them? Since his remarks, there have been multiple attempts on the lives of sitting justices. Justice Amy Coney Barret was sent home one day in a bulletproof vest.

I could go on with such examples, but politicians, judges and even voters are now “threats.” Aside from the “threat to democracy” comments about Trump, there are the ad nauseam misrepresentations of his statements that make him sound not merely objectionable but malign. “Dictator on day one,” “bloodbath,” and “very fine people on both sides” comments have all been wholly taken out of context by the media and politicians for votes, views, and clicks.

My point is not to say Democrats behave worse than Republicans. My point is that you cannot represent someone as an existential threat to the country’s existence without expecting irrational people to take action. While I am staunchly in favor of free speech, we should appeal to our better angels and use the First Amendment to speak about ideas rather than engage in overwrought vilifications. Allowing the public to decide which ideas are better is how this country has governed itself from the beginning, and ideas should be the focus rather than the relatively unpersuasive politics of personal enmity.

I can’t argue against those who call Trump a convicted felon. Still, virtually no one who yells about his felonious transgressions can explain the novel two-step legal theory or other aspects of his conviction. For them, the Queen of Hearts will do: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” All that matters is that he is a convict.

Treasonous, too, is something used to describe Trump, but Special Counsel Jack Smith has refiled a revised indictment that does not include such a charge. Only the original four claims are in the document: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Even so, there hasn’t been so much as a trial date set.

The end of reasoned debate

The question arises as to why political violence has become the norm such that an attempted assassination of a former president and current candidate is news for one day. Why is the focus on Secret Service personnel and not who we have become and why? How has there not been a more significant examination of what we invite should an assassin be successful?

I’m not saying Trump is a puppy dog or that he doesn’t bear blame for escalating rhetoric, but the recent past did not bring claims of an existential threat posed by a single nominee who nevertheless has the ear of a lot of voters. Hillary Clinton called a group of voters “deplorables” and said they were “basically irredeemable.” Okay, not a good look, but she didn’t point to one person and say it’s all over because of him. I also recall the past chants of “Bush lied, people died.” It was a bit simplistic, but that was not about the end of the US. Portraying Mr. Trump as Hitler, as The New Republic did on its June cover, paints an ominous future using unambiguous imagery that metastasizes this country’s fury without informing.

When you portray someone as the singular manifestation of all that is wrong with the country, when every ill is concentrated in a sole personification, when you present an entire system of government that hangs in the balance but for an individual, you invite lunacy. Reasoned debate should prevail, and while individuals may bring a litany of problems and concerns to the feet of various politicians, the end of the country should not be among them. If we continue down these paths of Mephistophelian metaphors, by our own hands and not by policy positions the country may eventually “run out of lives here.”

[Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.