Strange days indeed
I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours doing what many of you have been doing: trying to determine what really happened with the Trump shooting, trying to understand it all, and trying to figure out what it means politically. But I’ll admit that in the moment when I first heard the news, it really hit me sideways.
I’d just gotten off a plane on my way to visit relatives, and we were in a restaurant when I got an alert on my phone that there had been a shooting at a Trump rally. Then I looked up at the TV in the bar that was airing CNN, and it said Trump had been rushed off the stage. That’s when I found the footage on my phone of Trump with blood on his head, and I knew something was really wrong. And this was while I was trying to have dinner with out of town relatives.
The strange part was when the news began to spread through the restaurant. Mind you, there are plenty of Trump fans in the place where I’m currently visiting. Someone at the next table over said “Did Trump get shot?” People began looking at their phones. As the concerned chatter spread, the bartender changed the TV from CNN to sports, seemingly in an effort to lower the temperature of the room.
It’s not as if anyone in the restaurant was reaching for their pitchforks. It was all sort of muted. But the vibe was… strange. And it led me to a rather unnerving, if rather irrational thought: what if I’m next?
I’m not under the delusion that I’m important enough to be at the top of anyone’s hit list. But if we’re at a point where the king of political violence Donald Trump is getting shot at, what next? In that moment I figured that if the shooter was an anti-Trump person, then Trump’s unhinged supporters would be looking for revenge, and if the shooter was a right winger then it would mean that right wingers were so violently out of control that they’re just shooting at everyone now.
And so here I was, the guy who always has to calm everyone down and provide perspective, momentarily having a bit of a panic attack. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Whenever political violence happens or is threatened, and “civil war” begins trending on Twitter, I’m always the one who has to logically explain why there isn’t going to be a civil war. But in that moment I had to logically explain it to myself. For once I had to talk me down.
I’m still not entirely over it. It helped me to learn that the shooter was indeed a registered Republican and gun nut, which means this was indeed an act of Republican on Republican violence. But it’s nonetheless all been very strange. It’s what a late mentor of mine used to call “gut check time.” Trump is now a wounded animal, surely now more unhinged than ever, which makes it more important than ever that we focus in and defeat him.
And that’s what I’m going to keep doing. I’m all-in on providing the kind of political perspective to help you to keep your head on straight so you can keep doing what you need to do as a political activist and a political voice. I’m going to keep steering you in the right direction as far as which storylines to amplify, which competitive races and swing states to focus on, and all of that. It’s my duty as a democracy loving American.
It’s okay to feel rattled from time to time when the stakes are this high and the potential outcomes are this dire. It happens to me too. I’m only human. But I’ve got a job to do. And I’m going to keep doing it.
