“Chickens coming home to roost,” responded Malcolm X to the assassination of John F Kennedy. He meant that in a violent society, violence cannot be contained. In a country premised on militarism and racist brutality, no one is safe. X’s remark was certainly callous, but he also had a point. It applies with even greater force to Saturday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
To be clear, the attempt on Trump’s life was reprehensible. An attack on him is an attack on democracy itself. It is a core democratic principle that no matter how much you disagree with your opponents you do not wish them dead. It is foolish and wrong to think that American democracy could gain from Trump’s assassination.
Yet one can condemn political violence and still seek its underlying causes. And no one is more responsible for creating its conditions in America than Trump himself. The attempt on his life is another illustration that in a society roiling with violence even those who weaponise it are vulnerable.
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Trump instigated the greatest act of political violence in the US since the civil war. He incited his followers to attack the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021, to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. Legislators ran for their lives as Trump supporters overwhelmed security and it was fortunate that no politicians were killed. Moreover, it should be remembered as an attempted mass assassination of American leaders.
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While campaigning to retake the White House, Trump has repeatedly referred to the January 6th attackers as martyrs. He has promised to pardon all who have been convicted of crimes, calling them “hostages.” He would dismiss any remaining prosecutions including, of course, those against himself. He faces numerous criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the election which culminated with the January insurrection. That attack was the ultimate act of Trump’s political violence. Throughout his presidency, he routinely demonised his opponents. Maga [Make America Great Again] followers were led to feel that anyone who disagreed with Trump was a traitor. In many cases, this led his supporters to commit acts of aggression. Trump also sought support from white nationalist paramilitaries. And in 2017, when a group of white supremacists including neo-Nazis stormed Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump’s first response was to defend some of them as “very fine people”.
Trump, and the Maga movement have deepened the US’s problem with gun violence. More than 40,000 Americans a year die as a consequence of gun violence which has replaced automobile incidents as the leading cause of death among children. Mass shootings have become routine events in the United States. While Trump did not create the gun problem, he heads a movement that has insisted on deregulation of firearms and the right to own assault weapons such as the AR-15 that was used against him on Saturday. In the Maga movement, gun ownership has become tied to a readiness to participate in insurrectionary violence. According to one prominent member, owning guns is not about the “right to shoot deer” but about the “right to shoot tyrants”.
Violence within the country has been aggravated by the violence the nation has perpetrated abroad. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, learned to shoot while he was in the US Marine Corps. Trump’s attacker may not have had any military connections, but the fact that assault weapons are so commonplace there is a boomerang effect of American militarism. And disaffected military veterans have played a prominent role in white supremacist paramilitaries since the Vietnam War and in the Maga movement more recently. Many of the January attackers were veterans of America’s “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is highly unlikely that Trump will ever recognise how he created conditions that led to the attempt on his life. The 1972 assassination attempt on presidential candidate George Wallace (who, like Trump, campaigned on racist populism) led him to reconsider some of his views. Wallace renounced his earlier support for racial segregation, but it is difficult to imagine that Trump will have a similar change of heart.
Surviving an assassination attempt can make a politician appear strong. Ronald Reagan benefited in the polls when he survived an attempt on his life early in his presidency. For an egomaniac such as Trump and his fanatical devotees, surviving assassination will lead to the belief that he is nearly invulnerable — as he himself has recognised, telling allies in 2023 that if he got shot, he would probably win the election. A projection of strength arising from this event may indeed help Trump secure the White House in November. This is especially true because he is facing Joe Biden, who after the catastrophic debate last month appears so mentally frail that most members of his party want to see him replaced at the top of the ticket. As we saw the night of that debate, which Trump won despite his repeated lies and threats to American democracy, in politics strong and wrong overpowers weak and right.
This assassination attempt will become a central event in an already volatile presidential campaign. Trump will undoubtedly exploit it for political gain. Indeed, his first instinct was to project an image of strength to his supporters. After the bullets stopped, secret service agents were escorting him to safety when he asked them to wait. Blood streaming down his face from where the assassin’s bullet had pierced his ear, he pumped his fist toward the crowd and reportedly mouthed the words, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The crowd responded, “USA! USA!” Throughout history, authoritarian leaders have used acts of aggression against themselves to perpetrate even greater violence against others.
The lasting image from this event will likely be the bloodied Trump pumping his fist at the crowd in defiance. But that image does not capture the reality.
On Saturday, Trump was not a hero but a victim — a victim of a cycle of political violence that he himself has turned.
Daniel Geary is Mark Pigott Associate Professor in American History at Trinity College Dublin
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