The historical perspective of the Trump shooting
First of all, I deplore violence in all its forms, including political violence. It is the first and last refuge of the weak, and it’s seldom a solution. Violence is a poor instrument of betterment except in times of warfare — and I also deplore war — when it is an occasional and sadly necessary evil. I am not calling upon you or anyone, brothers and sisters, to rush to my side in this. I am simply stating a personal principle.
That said, and as an amateur student of history, I can’t help but draw an irrelevant but (to me, anyway) interesting parallel. Yesterday, as I write this, 13 July 2024, an attempt was made on the life of Donald Trump. That date is exactly one week shy of the 80th anniversary of the most famous and nearly successful attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler.
On 20 July 1944, German Army officers General Friedrich Olbricht, Major General Henning von Tresckow and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg led a daring attempt to kill Hitler and seize the Nazi government. It was called “Unternehmen Walküre,” or Operation Valkyrie. It very nearly succeeded, but the lynchpin was the death of Hitler by way of a bomb planted in his bunker. Miraculously, the bomb failed to kill Hitler.
What followed was an act of vengeance too hideous to describe in detail. Hitler implemented an industrial machinery of revenge, including a savage show trial of members of the plot, that couldn’t have been more horrid had it been conducted in hell. The plot to kill him turned Hitler, an already paranoid maniac, into a seething monster of death. It led to all manner of paranoid ideations, and gave birth to insane and arbitrary accusations of disloyalty. In short, the plot didn’t merely fail, it made an awful situation worse.
One more thing I want to make clear as a matter of personal preference. I join our President, former President Barack Obama, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others, in their condemnation of the assassination attempt. An innocent bystander was murdered, another placed in critical condition and still others injured. But I do not join them in their prayers for Donald Trump, nor would I were I still a religious man. And let us not forget Trump’s loathsome comments about Nancy Pelosi’s husband when he was attacked with a hammer.
I hate Donald Trump, and I will not waste an ounce of sympathy on the man who stood by and watched violence unfold, and joined in the call to hang his Vice President, during the insurrection of January 6, 2021. It was his duty to prevent violence, and instead he initiated it, and later gave aid and comfort to the thugs who carried it out.
Moreover, this assassination attempt will give Trump political capital that he can spend to great effect. It remains to be seen how much damage it will do to us.
To this I draw a further historical parallel. In the presidential campaign of 1972, the loathsome segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace was shot in an attempted assassination by a lunatic named Arthur Bremer. He survived, and as a consequence of the assassination attempt, received an immediate uptick in votes for the Democratic nomination. That uptick was not enough, and he lost to George McGovern.
Just as Wallace lost I believe Trump will lose. Most Americans didn’t want a racist as their president then, and that still holds true today. No matter how much sympathy the assassination attempt gained him, I do not think it will be enough to save Trump.
But there’s more. As already observed, this attempt on his life will gain Trump useful political capital. But Trump will spend it unwisely. He will revert to type and become petty and vengeful. Much of the sympathy that was generated for him yesterday will dissolve. Trump is a narcissist and narcissists are uniformly bad at generating anything but surface sympathy. So take heart, brothers and sisters, all is well. I believe we will win in November, and win big.
One final thing. This assassination attempt is going to lead to all manner of stupid conspiracy theories and other idiotic claims. Pay them no heed. They will change very few minds. In the end, the assassination attempt on Trump will gain him very few votes, and could by way of balance, even ultimately lose him a few. So stay the course, and let’s win this one. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.