You might think that an attempt to shoot the president – okay, the former president and likely the next one, but you know what I mean – would be a big deal. And you might think that two attempts to shoot him in the space of a couple of months might be an even bigger deal. But you would be wrong. They are no deal at all, and that’s not a good thing. Not at all.
We are on a very scary path, and it’s unclear that there is a turn-off we can take that brings us someplace good.
What is happening now is unprecedented. I was a junior in high school when that rabid and very misguided Jodie Foster fanboy shot President Reagan. A few years before, a couple of Charles Manson bimbettes had made feeble attempts to murder Gerald Ford, but Hinckley managed to shoot Rawhide as well as three others. That happened while I was a high school junior. I am not sure if school let out or if we just watched it in class, but that was a huge deal. And it remained a huge deal for a while.
Now, one scuzz wounds the president and a couple of other people, plus kills Corey Competore, and it’s no biggie. Next, some Harris-Walz voter tried to ambush Trump on the fairway. And is this a huge story? Nah. They did not even interrupt the sportsball games for a special report. I mean, sure, an assassination attempt is no pet-noshing narrative. It’s just a couple of committed Democrats trying to change the course of American history with guns because Orange Man Bad.
And the regime media is okay with that. The reaction to Attempt No. 1 was simply muted as if they were measuring their words to provide plausible deniability that they thought the shooting was a bad thing for reasons beyond the fact that it gave the courageous candidate an iconic photograph and more combat time than the pseudo-sergeant major Dem VP nominee. But after Attempt No. 2, the regime media’s journohacks did not even try to pretend. They went right into their bullSchiff narrative. Why, Trump being mean to illegal aliens for dining on Fido means he brought it on himself. Stop hitting yourself, Donald. You were asking for it with that short skirt.
But beneath the garbage narrative to try to turn yet another Democrat murder freak into a MAGA NRA GOP White Nationalist Christian Guy, you could detect something else.
Disappointment. It was as if the unspoken question was not “How can we stop our allies from trying to murder our political opponents?” and was, instead, “Can’t anybody here shoot straight?”
Am I saying that Democrats want someone to blow Trump’s brains out?
No. I don’t have to say that. A majority of Democrats are saying that, or at least not denying it.
A poll in the wake of the latest would-be leftist murder spree – let’s not forget the baseball diamond Democrat shooter and the spate of trans freaks slaughtering innocents for insufficiently catering to their sick gender delusions – found some stunning numbers. Well, they were stunning only if you have not been paying attention. About 28% of Democrats surveyed said that yes, America would be better off if Trump was assassinated. As astonishing as it seems, over a quarter of Democrats were willing to confess to a stranger that they were hoping for the murder of a political opponent. Look, there will always be some fringie weirdos in any group. If even 5% had said it, okay, one in twenty of any group is probably a sociopath. But better than a quarter? Sick.
And then another 25% were unsure if America would be better off if Trump was assassinated. Unsure? Like you need to deeply ponder where you stand on shooting people for disagreeing with your politics? Like this takes some complex weighing of the pros and cons? And, of course, many of those respondents actually totally want Trump to be assassinated; they just had the self-control not to admit that to the total stranger taking the poll.
What we have, then, is a Democrat Party where the majority of its members do not unequivocally think that killing Donald Trump is a bad thing. And the Democrat leadership is cool with this. It’s not like Kamala Harris is out there explaining to her fans that assassinating political opponents is definitely not brat. In fairness to her, it’s not as if she’s out there explaining where she stands on anything – if she did offer a comment, it would probably be, “I was born into a middle-class family.”
But then, what do you expect? Trump is a threat to our Democracy! There will never be another election if he is elected! He’s a racist Nazi! He’s literally Hitler! Seems pretty dire, pretty extreme. Who wouldn’t prefer that some assassin had got through and capped Der Fuhrer before he goose-stepped into the Sudetenland?
So, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the Democrat leadership would be okay with it if one of their inept killbots managed to waste their opponent. All the pieces fit. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and gets eaten by random Haitian illegal aliens like a duck, it’s a duck.
But you cannot have a free country with norms like that. You cannot have a society where people compete for votes and where the people govern themselves if one faction decides – as the Democrats have – to change the rules so that their opponents never get to win. The laws passed by our representatives say that flooding America with illegals is illegal. The Democrats ignore the law and do it anyway. We’re supposed to be able to speak freely, but the Democrats label anything they don’t like as “misinformation” and attempt to censor or prosecute it. We’re supposed to have one system of justice for everyone, but the Democrats have established a special system for Republicans that bears no resemblance to the real justice system. And now, the Democrats dog whistle for nutty killers to murder their main opponent and a substantial number of their constituents feel comfortable either not caring or cheerleading it.
How do they imagine this ends? They tell themselves that this is just an expedient because Trump is a unique threat, but you know who else was a unique threat? Everyone – Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, McCain, and even that simpering sissy Mitt Romney. Of course, once the Hitler du jour is retired or expired, they are suddenly good Republicans. We all know the game. Every GOP candidate in the future will be even worse than Trump. Oh, that JD Vance – he’s not just Hitler but Hitler squared! And DeSantis, well, he’s Hitler cubed.
Do they think these New Rules are not going to be applied to everyone? They are thinking about getting a short-term advantage, not about the long-term destruction of our norms, norms that incidentally protect them from us. But could they walk it back even if they wanted to? How? Leftist change is only possible through crisis, by convincing people that things are so especially awful that the normal guardrails of society have to be torn down and the Old Rules (especially the ones giving their opponents the chance to have a say in their own governance) must be thrown out the Overton Window.
I do not know where this goes from here, though I have written about it in my books. But I do know that it is nowhere good. Maybe a massive electoral repudiation in November will cause the Democrats to change course from this perilous path, but I am afraid it will only make them double down in desperation.
Comrade Kamala must be kept out of the White House, and we need your help to take it back. Join Townhall VIP right now to get access to my extra Wednesday column, the weekly Stream of Kurtiousness videos every Friday, my Unredacted podcast every Monday, my VIP members-only direct email address, and more! Join now! Use promo code KURT for 50% off membership.
Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get the newest volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord! And get his new novel about terrorism in America, The Attack!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member