Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump made a triumphant entry into the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Monday evening, two days after surviving an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, and walking with the vigor of a man who may appear indestructible to many of his faithful followers, while his political opponents may now be glumly looking at the former president as unbeatable in November.
Wearing a bandage on his right ear, covering the wound caused by a bullet which so narrowly missed severely wounding or killing Trump, the fiormer president offered no remarks but instead joined family members in the stands to applaud others at the microphone. For Trump, Monday was a day of victory, not only winning the nomination, but also scoring a hunge win in court.
Monday unfolded with bad news for Democrats who have tried virtually everything to keep Trump out of the presidential race. A federal judge in Florida has dismissed the criminal case against Trump involving keeping classified documents after leaving the White House 3 ½ years ago. Special Counsel Jack Smith vowed to appeal, according to CNBC. Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled Smith’s appointment was uinconstitutional as she dismissed the case.
Would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was killed by a Secret Service marksman, so it may be impossible to sort out his motive, at least for the time being. A report at the Daily Mail says he tried unsuccessfully to get on his high school rifle team but was so inept he was bounced and asked to not come back.
What isn’t known is how the incident will affect Trump, who has habitually mentioned his support for protecting the Second Amendment in his stump speeches. Indeed, Trump is the only president in recent history to routinely mention gun rights and the Second Amendment in his campaign remarks, and he has appeared at several annual conventions of the National Rifle Association.
Now, Peggy Noonan, writing at the Wall Street Journal, had something of a snide observation: “Mr. Trump had heard at least one shot, maybe a few. One grazed his ear. He hit the deck, was lifted up in shock, pale. He should have been swiftly rushed from the stage. But no, this is the great genius of American political theater and the reflex kicked in…he got to his feet, he didn’t wipe the blood from his face, he wanted you to see and understand the whole picture. He got his look of tough-guy fury, the one he showed for weeks walking into court in New York, the one on the mug shot. He raised that fist, pumped it, shouted ‘Fight,’ as part of the crowd began to chant ‘U.S.A.! U.S.A.!’”
Perhaps not to be outdone within the context of “fair comment,” CNN’s Reliable Sources by Oliver Darcy contended the establishment news media is getting a bum rap from Trump media supporters, for having at least some responsibility for the toxic environment engulfing the former president.
“In the immediate wake of the horrific shooting attempt on Trump’s life,” Darcy wrote, “the news media has quickly emerged among some Trump supporters as a body to assign blame.
“While the Trump campaign urged its staff to ‘condemn all forms of violence’ and said it ‘will not tolerate dangerous rhetoric on social media,’” he added, “some of the former president’s supporters in MAGA Media vehemently assailed the press for its hard-knuckled reporting on Trump, which has sounded the alarm on what four more years under the former president would look like.”
That may not excuse the cover of The New Republic, depicting Trump as Hitler over the headline “American fascism.”
At DNYUZ.com, the headline seems to lament the current state of affairs within the Democratic party: “The New Calculus for Democrats and Donors: Is Trump Unbeatable?” The story notes, “The shooting has galvanized the Trump campaign, turning his nomination at the four-day convention into more of a coronation. And the incident led some sympathetic business leaders, including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, to publicly throw their support behind Trump.”
And The Daily Beast acknowledges the spot in which Democrats find themselves, observing, “Democrats hoping that President Joe Biden will drop out of the election race fear their chance of replacing him on the ticket is all but gone in the wake of the assassination attempt…”
The election thus appears Trump’s to lose. He is riding high on the court victory and surviving the assassination attempt, the latter which will become legendary with him rising from the platform with Secret Service agents huddled around him, and raising that clenched fist with the American flag wafiong in the background.
