The Trump shooter was a registered Republican, and that’s all you need to know
There are still numerous questions about the Trump shooting. Reports are still conflicting as to whether he got shot in the ear or whether he got hit by shattered teleprompter glass. And there are all kinds of strange aspects to how the Secret Service reacted in the aftermath. But one piece of information has been confirmed, and it’s going to set the tone for the entire thing: the shooter was a registered Republican.
Multiple major news outlets have confirmed that the shooter registered as a Republican in 2021, and was still a registered Republican at the time of the shooting. Why would he want to target Trump, the standard bearer of the Republican Party? That part remains to be seen. But, politically speaking, it won’t matter.
Right or wrong, these kinds of frenetic political stories come down to the prevailing soundbites that make their way to persuadable voters in the middle. When it comes to this shooting, what they’re going to hear (again and again) is that the Trump shooter was a Republican. And that’ll eliminate the Republicans’ ability to argue that Democrats and the left are the real perpetrators of violence. This was some kind of internal matter on the right.
In other words, regardless of what other details end up surfacing, this was a case of Republican on Republican violence. It’s certainly not going to steer persuadable voters in the middle toward Trump. Whatever this was, whatever the shooter’s real motivation, however all the suspicious mysteries about this shooting end up playing out, it’s not likely to help Trump politically.
