News, Our Reckoning, and Resistance

Strap in for a long-ish post. There is a lot to cover. 

The Shooting

The Shooter.

We know a little more about the shooter. No motive has been found. He has no discernible political ideology, other than being registered Republican. He has been described as "nice," "kind," "a loner" as well as "quiet" and "very smart," and also “bullied so much in high school.” 

Apparently on the day of the shooting, his parents called law enforcement saying they were worried for his safety. Not much more is known about that. 

His digital footprint is minimal. There's no indication of mental illness and no links to extremist groups or individuals. His computer searches showed searches for images of T**** and Biden, when is the Democratic National Convention, and the T**** rally where the shooting occurred. It is believed he acted alone.

Michael Ramirez

The Security Failure

Facts are coming out that law enforcement saw the shooter up to an hour before the shooting and tried to alert the Secret Service at least 10 minutes before the shooting. The inside of the building where the shooter perched was secure; the roof was not. It was a colossal failure on the part of the Secret Service. Seems like heads are gonna roll in that organization over this series of awful missteps.

The Secret Service snipers on a nearby roof might not have seen the shooter due to the roof's slope as well as trees in the area. Look to The Washington Post for a diagram, as well as to read other facts about the shooting. Read here in Yahoo News about big questions we have about the security and how this happened. 

The Victims

The intended victim, djt, has not released any medical reports about the injury. He says "he's fine" but we know nothing about the wound (was it caused by a bullet or by shrapnel from the shattered teleprompter?) or its treatment (were stitches needed? Did he lose any part of his ear?). 

All we know is the big white bandage over the area. 

A big white bandage, however, became the fashion statement at the Republican National Convention. Ok, really? Really.

Axios. Joe Raedle/Getty Image

There was a remarkable photograph captured that likely shows the bullet whizzing by. Below is the photo, caught by New York Times photographer Doug Mills, and here is an analysis that confirms that it is indeed probably the bullet.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

We know more about the more severely injured victims. The man who was killed was Corey Comperatore, 50, a volunteer firefighter who threw himself on top of his family and kept them safe while he took the bullet. 

The other two people have been identified as James "Jim" Copenhaver, 74, and David Dutch, 57, both Pennsylvania residents. Both victims remain in the hospital, both in improving conditions after their severe wounds. 

It has been reported that Comperatore's widow was contacted by Joe Biden by telephone shortly after the shooting. She declined to take his call, saying her husband was a T**** supporter and would not have wanted her to talk to him. It was also reported that Donald T**** did not reach out until three days later. You may have seen memes that he went golfing the day after. Those are false. He was at his Bedminster club briefly before he went to Minneapolis for the convention. Still, he should've called Mrs. Comperatore immediately. 

Disgustoids

Disgustoid #1

OF COURSE T**** decided to capitalize on the tragedy. Looks like he'll gain a cool $1.5 million on his new shoes:

Disgustoid #2

Harsh T**** critic turned sycophant Ohio Sen. JD Vance, 39, is the GOP vice presidential nominee. 

R.J. Matson

Vance had previously blasphemed against the chosen one, saying the following about T****. Thanks, Politico, for compiling these nuggets.

• “I’m a Never Trump guy.”
• “My god, what an idiot.”
• "America's Hitler"
• “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
• "I can't stomach Trump."

            and the goodie:

• "I think there’s a chance, if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.”

My my, how the boots now shine. His tongue must be awfully brown.

JD is a bad, bad, man. One example. He defended 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who carried a assault rifle into riots in Kenosha, Wisconson in 2020 and shot three people, killing two of them. Vance called Rittenhouse's actions "manly virtue" and said : "We want to promote the types of virtues that exist in Kyle Rittenhouse." See the interview here.

He also said that if he were in Mike Pence's position, he would not have certified the election results on January 6, 2021. Way to save your neck, JD. 

The bad news is that Vance is now firmly in the MAGA camp and buys into all those damaged goods. The good news about him is that he satisfies the MAGA base and does nothing to broaden the appeal of the ticket. 

Disgustoid #3

Hours after being released from prison for his contempt of Congress charge, former T**** official Peter Navarro spoke at the RNC to a cheering standing ovation. He spouted the same tired lines. Some of it truth: "If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, they can come for you."  You are right. Break the law and "they" will come for you. Some of it martyrdom: "I went to prison so you don’t have to." Ummm... thank you?

More from the "Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity... (Proverbs 22:8)" files

John Deering

The shooting was wrong, and there is no indication that it was politically motivated. Don't let the noise of "But! But! Biden said Trump should be in the bullseye!" BS distract you from the person who has sowed the images and ideas of political violence for years. T**** has been the instigator of violent rhetoric for as long as he has been on the political stage, and probably longer.  

Here are just a few examples of his violent words, with sources, below. Click on the links for many more.

From The Bulwark:

February 22, 2016

Trump reacts to a nonviolent heckler in Las Vegas, Nevada with nostalgia for more violent times: “You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks. . . . I’d like to punch him in the face, I tell you.”

August 9, 2016

At a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, Trump tells his supporters that Hillary Clinton will abolish gun owners’ rights if elected, then adds, “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people—maybe there is, I don’t know.” Trump later claims he was simply saying that Second Amendment supporters are a powerful voting bloc who can stop Clinton, but in context, his remark clearly referred to something that “the Second Amendment people” could do after Clinton’s election victory.

May 9, 2019

At a rally in Pensacola, Florida, Trump plays standup comedian in response to a suggestion that migrants should be shot at the border. After complaining that border agents aren’t allowed to “use weapons” against border-crossers, he adds, “I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?” When someone shouts out, “Shoot them,” Trump chuckles, pauses to let the audience cheer and laugh, then delivers his punchline: “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement. Only in the Panhandle,” and basks in the wild applause and laughter. (In October of that year, there were reports—not contested by Trump—that in White House discussions of the migrant problem, he had suggested shooting border-crossers in the legs.)

September 12, 2020

In a Fox News interview discussing the fatal shooting of an Antifa-connected murder suspect by federal marshals, Trump frames it (and praises it) not as law enforcement action against an armed and dangerous subject, but as an extrajudicial execution: “That’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.”

September 29, 2020

During his debate with Joe Biden, Trump declines an opportunity to condemn far-right violence, instead telling the Proud Boys, a group implicated in a number of violent incidents, to “stand back and stand by.”

December 19, 2020

Trump invites his supporters to a rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, promising that the gathering—which turned into the attack on the Capitol—“will be wild.”

and of course, all the January 6, 2021 stuff;

When notified that attendees at his rally near the White House are bringing in weapons, Trump orders the metal detectors removed. “I don’t [fucking] care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me,” he reportedly says.

“We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump tells the angry, energized crowd of his supporters after two months of whipping them into hysteria with lies about a supposedly stolen election. A February 2024 analysis by Tom Joscelyn, Norman Eisen, and Fred Wertheimer finds that while “Trump uttered the word ‘peacefully’ just one time during his speech, which lasted more than an hour, he used variations of the word ‘fight’ 20 times.” (Eighteen of those, moreover, were ad-libbed and not present in the prepared notes for the speech.)

As the Capitol riot erupts, Trump initially resists allowing a statement urging his supporters to stay “peaceful” to be posted on his Twitter account. At 2:24 p.m., when he has already been watching the riot on TV for an hour and when the mob has already broken into the Capitol, he tweets that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country.”

From Axios:

August 2017: In the aftermath of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump failed to unequivocally condemn the violence and said "many sides" were to blame, failing to distinguish between those who participated in the "Unite the Right" rally and those who showed up in opposition to it.

October 2019: A New York Times report outlined various strategies Trump had allegedly deliberated to keep migrants away from the U.S. southern border, including a water-filled trench with snakes or alligators and shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down.

May 2020: Trump used violent rhetoric when referring to protests in Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, tweeting, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." The phrase has a racist history going back to police brutality against Black Americans in the 1960s, per the New York Times.

September 2020: Trump lauded law enforcement officers for killing Michael Forest Reinoehl, a self-described Antifa member suspected of killing a right-wing activist the previous month. "That’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution," Vox reported.

At the beginning of October 2023, AP News reported that in the past two weeks, T**** said "shoplifters should be immediately shot, suggested the United States’ top general [General Mark Milly] be executed and mocked a political opponent’s husband [Paul Pelosi, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband] who was beaten with a hammer."

On January 6, he responded to reports of the threats to "hang Mike Pence," "Mike deserves it."

All that rhetoric does not bounce around and disappear. It works to inspire. In 2020, ABC News found 54 instances of violent acts or threats where T****'s name was invoked. They did not find a single criminal case where Biden's or Obama's names were invoked.

The day after the shooting, philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris wrote this. Thanks to Resister MJ for sending along the Harris pieces. They are powerful. I'm including the whole piece because it is that well-written and powerful. 

In the aftermath of yesterday’s events, we must hold three truths in mind simultaneously: The first is that political violence, of any kind, is horrific and obscene. Despite the widespread moral confusion evident on social media, the attempted assassination of former President Trump was simply a tragedy for our country. And in response to this truth, we must do whatever we can to restore civility and basic decency to our politics.

But there is a second truth, now all but unutterable, and it is this: No one has done more to destroy civility and basic decency in our politics than Donald Trump. No one, in fact, has done more to increase the threat of political violence. Unlike any president in modern history, Trump brings out the worst in both his enemies and his friends. His influence on American life seems almost supernaturally pernicious.

The problem for Democrats is that any observation of this second truth—a truth that seems likely to darken and expand in the aftermath of yesterday’s attack—will now be condemned as rancorous and immoral—or worse, as an incitement to further political violence. Every necessary criticism of Trump’s authoritarianism, fondness for dictators, fraudulence, personal corruption, hostility to the rule of law, and fathomless dishonesty—will be mistaken for (or cynically construed as) a symptom of the very political disease we must cure. Telling the truth about the actual risks that Trump and Trumpism still pose to our democracy just became much more difficult.

As we await further details about the gunman, it is important that we embrace a third truth: Whether or not it becomes easy to detect a coherent motive or set of influences, we must recognize that he represented no one and nothing beyond his own abomination. And depending on what we learn about him, this truth could prove dangerously elusive. It may even seem to contradict the second truth adduced above. Didn’t I just suggest that Trump himself has behaved so irresponsibly as to increase the risk of political violence? Yes, and he has done so repeatedly. For instance, in 2016 candidate Trump mused that a staunch defender of the Second Amendment might want to kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from appointing judges that could threaten our gun rights. This single utterance represents a shocking and unprecedented violation of a political norm—merely one among hundreds that Trump carelessly shattered, both as a candidate and as president. However, had there been a subsequent attempt on Clinton’s life, it would have been wrong to have held Trump directly responsible for the violence, because there was a vast gulf between his words, however reckless, and a sincere incitement to murder. And there is a further gulf between incitement and the act of climbing a roof with a rifle and attempting to kill another human being. We cannot allow the lunatic behavior of a disturbed young man to further derange our politics.

Let me state the second truth more starkly, in case the third still isn’t clear. There are tens of millions of Americans who believe that the world would be a better place without Donald Trump in it. And if he were to die in his sleep sometime before election day, they would not mourn him. I suspect that literally millions of Americans would celebrate the man’s natural death. This is not merely a sign of how politically unhinged we have become as a nation; it is a sign of how unhinged Trump has made us. Fully half of our neighbors are desperate to have this man out of their lives. But very few of them would defend what happened yesterday, for obvious reasons. The first is surely that they don’t support murder. But most of them also understand the first truth above: political violence, in any direction, for any stated purpose, harms us all.

If an ordinary Republican like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, John McCain, or Mitt Romney had been shot under identical circumstances, what would happen next? This is a surprisingly easy question to answer. We can be entirely confident that any of these men would soon step before the cameras, very likely in the company of his Democratic opponent, and call for unity in America. Having been brought to the precipice, a normal Republican would seek to lead our nation back to safety. He would emphasize not his personal magnificence, the heroic sacrifices he has made for his supporters, or the vengeance he will soon unleash upon his enemies, but the necessity for calm. He would assert his confidence in the strength of our democracy and the integrity of our electoral process. Above all, he would speak about the sacred significance of a peaceful transfer of power.

Is this what anyone expects from Trump in the coming days? His first words to the crowd, fist raised, appear to have been “Fight! Fight!” What will his next words be? Will he try to unite our country, or will he talk about the Democrats as “scum,” the press as “enemies of the people,” and assert that only he can save our country from the evil that assails it, as never before, from within and without?

Let’s wait and see.

And where is the Democratic candidate who can effectively campaign against Trump now?

Which brings us to....

Will He Stay or Will He Go?

In the few days since the shooting, news about Biden's candidacy went a little quiet, understandably, but didn't disappear altogether. The most influential Dem lawmakers, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Majority Leader Hakeem Jefferies, both have had conversations with Joe Biden and asked him to suspend his candidacy. California Representative and Senate candidate Adam Schiff also called him and asked him to step aside. And maybe the most influential of them all, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also warned him that he cannot win.

There is growing concern that Biden will take the down-ballot candidates with him, and Dems will lose the Senate as well as House seats. Already, fundraising for Dem candidates up and down the ticket has taken a hit.

There are signs that his resolve to stay in the race is weakening.

• Biden gave himself an out by saying the only reason he might step aside was if some "medical condition" would appear. There's already been speculation of Parkinson's disease. If he cites that, he can leave with dignity. He was diagnosed with Covid this week. I hope he is not too ill. But any down time at this point is not good for the campaign. 
• From WaPo: Pelosi has told House Democrats that Biden may soon be persuaded to exit race
• From NBCNews.com: Biden's family starts discussing his possible exit plan from the 2024 race

There is all kinds of speculation as to who might be a suitable replacement candidate. The early names thrown out were Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Other names emerging are Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. According to a draft analysis by BlueLabs, acquired by Politico, those last three each outpace Joe Biden by five points. Five points! Other potential candidates, including Harris, are an average of three points better than Biden.

Can we again ask Zeus to intervene?

The rest of Proverbs 22:8. "...and the rod of his fury will fail"

We are poised to fell T****'s rod of fury. Each and every one of us needs to act. We must not shake our fists and yell into the wind. We must mobilize.

Ignore the people who think that because of the shooting the words of criticism from this side somehow are inflaming. We must still speak the truth. T**** is unfit for office. He has deep flaws. Did he turn a corner and take stock after he was nearly killed? No. He is still the same. 

He and his MAGAt friends will do deep damage. It's more important now than ever to speak truth to power! As Jennifer Rubin said in a recent newsletter (I won't include the whole piece here, but it's worth a read): 

"The pro-democracy message must not be diluted. The choice of words should be precise ('threat to democracy'). The admonition to resolve differences at the ballot box must be stressed, but the intensity of the argument against authoritarianism cannot let up."

There is a huge contingent of resisters ready to act, and I hope you are among us. Red Wine & Blue is one group motivating action. Please visit them, learn from them, and go act. 

Please please PLEASE learn about Project 2025. Read my piece here: A Project 2025 Primer, or do your own search, and talk to people you know. Spread the word about it; share your concerns about it. If you know an undecided voter, that person is the most important to talk to. Know a Gen Z voter? Here is their Guide to Project 2025 from Voters of Tomorrow.

Share the information! It is important!

It is an exciting time. Activists, many of them women, are getting grassroots efforts out to make a change. Red Wine & Blue, a self-described group of suburban women, and Heather Cox Richardson recently co-hosted a Zoom event with thousands of citizens ready to act. 

Toward the end of the meeting, Richardson said, "….it’s a frightening time but in these moments when you get this sort of chaos and the fear, I think one of the things that really jumps out to me… is it's also a time of extraordinary joy. I mean we get to do this we get to create a new nation and you think about everything that's out there now: the new languages, the new music, the new ways to think about the world, the new literature, the new art all the stuff that is suggesting a direction that we could go: a new kind of America. It's certainly worth being frightened, but it's also kind of worth thinking about this as a bit of a celebration; you know it's a party.… it is a celebration that I'm incredibly excited to be part of.”

Check with Red Wine & Blue, Indivisible, or check my suggestions for action here. Plan to do just one thing. Together, all the small things are a huge movement!

With all of us working together, we will bring the crops to harvest, and the rod of T****'s fury will indeed fail. 

Or in our case, by a loud minority.

And finally, watch this video from George Conway. Conway is a Republican, involved in The Lincoln Project and willing to put his money where his mouth is to bring T**** down and protect democracy. He recently issued this. Thanks, Brother Resister Brian, for sending it!

RESIST!