Donald Trump Pennsylvania rally shooting

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      Trump’s divisive speech and a rightwing mirror world: key takeaways from RNC day four

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      For all the claims from his supporters that surviving an assassination attempt had left Donald Trump a “changed” man, one more softened and spiritual, the Trump who accepted his party’s nomination on Thursday night was deeply familiar: same divisive rhetoric, same divisive policies.But the Republican crowd that surrounded Trump was certainly cheerful and energized. “I have never been to a more fun convention, or a convention with better vibes,” the ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson told them, and his unscripted comments seemed to capture a real mood. Biden and the Democrats are foundering, Trump narrowly survived a terrifying attack, and Republicans appear to believe that Trump has already won the election.Here are five takeaways from the night:1. Trump talked about his assassination attempt for the first, and he said, final timeLike many his supporters, Trump said he believed he had been protected by God last weekend, but he also emphasized how moved he had been by the behavior of his supporters when he was shot. When faced with a hail of bullets, he said, most crowds would have panicked and tried to flee, but his did not.After the Secret Service members “pounced” on him to protect him from the gunfire, Trump said: “There was blood pouring everywhere, yet, in a certain way, I felt very safe, because I had God on my side, I felt that.”“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump said later, and when the crowd began to chant: “Yes you are! Yes you are!” he responded, “But I’m not – and I’ll tell you. I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God.”Trump also said he could see a look of sorrow on the faces of his supporters, who watched him go down and assumed that he had been shot in the head and was dead. When he stood up again and lifted his fist, he said, the crowd responded in a way that he had never heard before.“This massive crowd of tens of thousands of people stood by and didn’t move an inch,” Trump said. In fact, he said, many of them stood and started looking for the sniper and pointing at him. “Nobody ran, and by not stampeding, many lives were saved,” Trump said, saying he believed “the reason is that they knew I was in very serious trouble”.“For the rest of my life,” Trump said, “I will be grateful for the love shown by that giant audience of patriots that stood bravely on the fateful evening in Pennsylvania.”2. Trump may be ‘changed’ after the assassination attempt, but he didn’t sound that changed In the early minutes of his speech, Trump delivered some of the “unity” rhetoric that he told journalists he had planned.“The discord and division in our society must be healed,” Trump said. “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”But soon after the somber beginning to his “unity” speech, Trump turned cheerful and chatty, first praising his friends, and then, soon enough, railing in a familiar way against “crazy Nancy Pelosi”, calling Biden one of America’s worst presidents, and then, to cheers, referring to Covid once again as the “China virus”.“I hope you will remember this in November and give us your vote. I am trying to buy your vote. I’ll be honest about that,” Trump later quipped to the voters of Wisconsin, talking about the $250m the Republican national convention is supposed to bring to the Wisconsin economy.“We’re never going to let it happen again. They used Covid to cheat,” Trump said, continuing to deny he lost the 2020 election to Biden.Though sources said Trump would simply not use Biden’s name in his speech, he did, saying: “If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States – think of it, the 10 worst – added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done.”3. The Republican convention is a mirror world: ‘I am the one saving democracy,’ Trump saysThroughout their convention, Republicans have taken key Democratic lines of attack and claimed them for themselves. In the world of the Republican national convention, the Democrats are the ones who are undermining US democracy, not the party whose supporters stormed the US Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “Biden is acting like a dictator,” the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, said in a speech on Wednesday.Republican politicians kept reciting the names of women who have been raped or sexually assaulted by immigrants, while blaming the Democratic party’s immigration policies for putting them at risk. They didn’t talk about Trump being found liable of sexual abuse in a civil trial brought by the magazine writer E Jean Carroll, or the allegations of sexual misconduct he has faced from more than two dozen women. Biden and Harris were called criminals, rather than the candidate who has been convicted on 34 felony charges, and whose convention featured a Trump ally who had just been released from federal prison.“The Democrat party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labelling their political opponents as an enemy of democracy, especially since that is not true,” Trump said on Thursday. “In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the  people of our country.”4. Trump again pledges to carry out the largest deportation in US history Before Trump spoke, other Republican politicians devoted large swathes of time during their convention to demonizing undocumented migrants, blaming them for a host of social ills, and advocating not just for a border wall but also “Mass deportations now.”Trump’s speech mirrored the convention as a whole, with a major focus on attacking migrants as criminals and rapists, and claiming, without evidence, that countries like El Salvador had seen decreases in crime because they were shipping all of their murders to the US. (Human rights organizations continue to speak out about the effects of mass arrests in El Salvador.)Trump again promised “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” and pledged that his deportations would be “even larger than that of president Dwight D Eisenhower from many years ago. You know, he was a moderate but he believed very strongly in borders. He had the largest deportation operation we’ve ever had.”5. Trump promises ‘two things on day one’ … ‘Close our borders’ and ‘drill, baby, drill!’Trump also joined other Republicans throughout the week in touting the GOP as the party of fossil fuel, as Republicans repeatedly chanted: “Drill, baby, drill!”Climate change experts and activists have said that both Trump and his vice presidential pick, JD Vance, are likely to pursue a “methodical” climate crisis denial presidency that would include increasing production of fossil fuel, ignoring mainstream climate science and undermining or overturning rules to reduce emissions.One of the everyday Americans invited to speak at the convention earlier in the week was the petroleum engineer Sarah Phillips, who criticized Biden and the Green New Deal. “The hydrocarbons that are being extracted are a true gift,” Phillips said. “Our society and our standard of living could not exist without fossil fuels.”“These liberal senators shut down the Keystone Pipeline,” the Montana senator Steve Daines said earlier on Thursday. “An America First majority – we’re going to drill, baby, drill!” More

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      Hundreds mourn Pennsylvania man killed in Trump assassination attempt

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      Hundreds of people who gathered to remember the former fire chief fatally shot at a weekend rally for former president Donald Trump were urged to find “unity” as the area in rural Pennsylvania sought to recover from the assassination attempt.Wednesday’s public event was the first of two to memorialize and celebrate Corey Comperatore’s life. The second, a visitation for friends, was planned for Thursday at Laube Hall in Freeport.Outside the Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, where the vigil was held for Comperatore, a sign read “Rest in Peace Corey, Thank You For Your Service” with the logo of his fire company.On the rural road to the auto racing track – lined with cornfields, churches and industrial plants – a sign outside a local credit union read: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Comperatore family.”View image in fullscreenComperatore, 50, had worked as a project and tooling engineer, was an army reservist and had spent many years as a volunteer firefighter after serving as chief, according to his obituary.He died on Saturday during the attempt on Trump’s life at the rally in Butler. Comperatore spent the final moments of his life shielding his wife and daughter from gunfire, officials said.A statement issued on Thursday by Comperatore’s family described him as “our beloved father and husband, and a friend to so many throughout the Butler region”.“Our family is finding comfort and peace through the heartfelt messages of encouragement from people around the world, through the support of our church and community, and most of all through the strength of God,” the statement said.Vigil organizer Kelly McCollough told the crowd on Wednesday that the event was not political in nature, adding that there was no room for hate or personal opinions other than an outpouring of support for the Comperatore family.“Tonight is about unity,” McCollough said. “We need each other. We need to feel love. We need to feel safe. We need clarity in this chaos. We need strength. We need healing.”Dan Ritter, who gave a eulogy, said he bought Comperatore’s childhood home in 1993, sparking a friendship that grew with their shared values of family, Christian faith and politics.“Corey loved his family and was always spending time with them,” Ritter said. “This past Saturday was supposed to be one of those days for him. He did what a good father would do. He protected those he loved. He’s a true hero for us all.”Jeff Lowers of the Freeport fire department trained with Comperatore and said at the vigil that he always had a smile on his face.Afterward, Heidi Powell, a family friend, read remarks from Comperatore’s high school economics teacher, who could not attend the vigil.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What made Corey truly extraordinary was his indomitable spirit, unyielding courage, his unflappable optimism,” the teacher, Mark Wyant, wrote.Comperatore’s pastor, Jonathan Fehl of the Cabot Methodist church, said the family “has been humbled by the way this community has rallied around them”, and by the support they have received from people around the world.The vigil concluded with people in the crowd lighting candles and raising cellphones, glow sticks and lighters as Comperatore’s favorite song – I Can Only Imagine, by the Christian rock band MercyMe – played while pictures of him and his family were shown on a screen.Two other people were injured at the rally: David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township. As of Wednesday night, both had been upgraded to serious but stable condition, according to a spokesperson with Allegheny Health Network.Joseph Feldman, an attorney for Copenhaver, said on Wednesday that he had spoken with Copenhaver by phone.“He seems to be in good spirits, but he also understands the gravity of the situation,” Feldman said. “And he’s deeply saddened about what has occurred, and he’s deeply sympathetic” to the other victims and their families.Feldman said Copenhaver suffered “life-altering injuries”, declining to go into detail. He said Copenhaver’s priority is to “keep up with the medical treatment he’s receiving and hopefully be released at some point”.In a statement, Dutch’s family thanked the “greater western Pennsylvania community and countless others across the country and world” for the incredible outpouring of prayers and well wishes.Trump suffered an ear injury but was not seriously hurt and has been participating this week in the Republican national convention in Milwaukee. More

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      To his supporters, Trump is a martyred messiah, resurrected after crucifixion | Sidney Blumenthal

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      The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has transformed the theology of Trump. He has long portrayed himself as an innocent lamb falsely accused, the target of slings and arrows to bear the suffering of believers. Now the bullet and the blood of Butler, Pennsylvania, have sanctified him for the faithful and brought forth a new gospel.Earlier this month, the Republican National Committee endorsed the party platform, a document that contained a plank pledging to create a new federal agency to defend Christian nationalism: “To protect Religious Liberty, Republicans support a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias that will investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.” The document casts Christians as though they are a sect still persecuted by the Romans, about to be dragged into the Colosseum to face ferocious beasts.But after the shooting, there was no mention of a platform. There was no reference to the political party. Trump had not simply survived crucifixion. He was not only resurrected. He became his own second coming. He was washed in his own blood. Divine intervention proved he was destined to return. All that is required from followers are declarations of faith. The return is a restoration of the grand course of events that was unjustly detoured by a stolen election. Trump is now a martyr, resurrected and the second coming all at once. All power is invested in the messiah on day one.“The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” Trump explained. “I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead. By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here.” He was reborn.His sanctification has produced a new narrative by those who wish to be seen as his most fervent apostles. They compete to proclaim the new gospel. “GOD protected President Trump yesterday,” tweeted House speaker Mike Johnson. “God’s hand of protection” held Trump safe, the Rev Franklin Graham told Fox News. “The devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle,” said Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina. “Listen, if you didn’t believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now.” They are the chosen messengers of the chosen one. The fervor with which they tell the story reveals more than their faith, but also establishes their seat at the table of the apostles.The most important revelation was written within hours of the shooting by Senator JD Vance, now Trump’s running mate. His was not a gospel of peace, but of wrath. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” Vance wrote. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”Pointing his spear at the enemy, Vance settled the apostolic succession. He is a changeling, who once compared Trump to “heroin” and “Hitler”, but his conversion into Trump’s warrior has vaulted him to become the anointed disciple and chief of the praetorian guard of the living godhead.Before the assassination attempt, the Christian nationalists’ narrative awkwardly tried to fit the licentious, sinful and predatory Trump into a framework in which his apparent absence of virtue and religious faith served virtue and faith. They commonly referred to him as King Cyrus, after the Persian ruler, who did not “recognize” God but was described in Isaiah 45 as “anointed” by the Lord to free the exiled Jews in Babylon.Trump’s origin story as the son of the brutish real estate operator Fred Trump and the pupil of the nefarious fixer and Mafia lawyer Roy Cohn was always problematic. None of his followers ever acknowledge it, except perhaps for Cohn’s protege Roger Stone, who was handed Trump to run as a client when Cohn was dying of Aids. That true crime story remains dangerous to the Trump mythology.A movie about Trump’s relationship with Cohn, The Apprentice, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, has not yet found an American distributor. Media companies have been intimidated at the possibility of Trump’s vengeance. “If you do not immediately cease all publication and marketing of the movie, President Trump will pursue every appropriate legal means to hold you accountable for this gross violation of President Trump and the American people’s rights,” Trump’s lawyer wrote the producers of the film.So, as in Isaiah 45, the 45th president was the king whose “right hand” was invisibly guided from above. “He, like King Cyrus before him, fulfilled the biblical prophecy of the gods worshiped by Jews,” proclaimed Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host. The Trump Prophecy, a film hailing his presidency as divinely ordained, produced with faculty and students from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, also cast him as King Cyrus. An evangelical preacher, Paula White, whom Trump invited to speak at his 2017 inauguration ceremony and welcomed to the White House to bless him for nominating Neil Gorsuch to the supreme court, declared: “Because God says that he raises up and places all people in places of authority, it is God who raises up a king.”After Trump’s multiple indictments and felony conviction, he intensified his image-making as a martyr, the victim of conspiratorial forces, of the “Deep State”, “radical left Democrats” and “globalist elites”. He presented himself as selflessly absorbing the blows that were really meant for his supporters, whom he was shielding from “poisoning of the blood” from immigrants. But he instantly translated his supposed self-sacrifice into cries of revenge.On 4 August 2023, the day after he was formally charged in the January 6 case, Trump posted on Truth Social: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” By April of this year, Trump had made numerous threats against the judges, court staff and witnesses in all of his cases, who have received death threats and are under the protection of security details, including the US marshals. Trump’s courtroom outbursts forced judges to issue 14 gag orders. In the New York hush-money case, he violated 10 gag orders, which may be pertinent in his sentencing on 18 September. In that case, after Trump attacked Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter, Merchan said, in issuing one of the gag orders: “The threat is very real.”On 4 June, after his conviction on 34 felonies in the New York hush-money case, Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News: “Look, when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them. And it’s easy because it’s Joe Biden and you see all the criminality.” Biden, of course, had nothing to do with the New York case.Two weeks earlier, Trump had appeared before the National Rifle Association convention to warn: “If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns, 100% certain.” He conflated gun control with his trials: “No, they want to take away your rights. Well, I know that better than anybody. They want to take away my rights better than anybody, worse than Alphonse Capone.” He returned to guns. “We have to have a gun,” he said. “If we don’t have a gun, we’re dead people.”On 6 January 2024, a week before the Republican Iowa caucuses, 17-year-old Dylan Butler entered his school in a small town in Perry, north of Des Moines, killed one student and wounded seven more people before he shot himself. He also had an explosive device. “Two friends and their mother who spoke with the AP said Butler was a quiet person who had been bullied relentlessly since elementary school,” the Associated Press reported. After 36 hours of silence, Trump called the incident “very terrible”, adding: “But we have to get over it, we have to move forward.”Back in 2015, after Trump announced his first candidacy, he gave an interview to a gun blog called Ammoland. He had previously supported the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, passed in 1994 under the Clinton administration, which a research team at New York University’s Langone Medical Center for the National Institute of Health calculated reduced mass shootings by 70%. That ban was allowed to lapse in 2004 under the George W Bush administration.Trump wanted to reassure the gun lobby that he was emphatically against gun control. “To the left, every gun is an assault weapon,” he said. “I certainly stand by my opposition to gun control when it comes to taking guns from law-abiding citizens. You mention that the media describes the AR-15 as an ‘assault rifle,’ which is one example of the many distortions they use to sell their agenda. However, the AR-15 does not fall under this category. Gun-banners are unfortunately preoccupied with the AR-15, magazine capacity, grips and other aesthetics, precisely because of its popularity.”On 9 August 2016, Trump delivered a stemwinding speech against gun control and threatened the assassination of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. He ridiculed the idea of “gun-free zones” and hypothesized being shot by a gunman from the side, saying: “Do you know what a gun-free zone is? That’s like – they study where the gun-free zones – if they would have known you had guns, if they would have known that they were going to be shot at from the other side, it would have been a whole different story. Maybe it wouldn’t have even happened in the first place.”Then, he incited the crowd against Hillary Clinton. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Trump said. “Although the second amendment, people – maybe there is, I don’t know.”Four years later, Hillary Clinton still appeared as a target for Donald Trump Jr, who posted a picture of himself on Instagram on 4 January 2020, holding an AR-15 etched with a Crusader’s Cross, a far-right symbol, and Hillary Clinton’s image behind bars on the magazine. “Nice day at the range. @rarebreedfirearms and @spikes_tactical adding a little extra awesome to my AR and that mag,” he wrote.On January 6, according to testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to the White House chief of staff, when Trump was informed that thousands in the crowd on the Ellipse whom he urged on to the Capitol refused to be screened for weapons at the magnetometers set by the Secret Service, he shouted: “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons! They’re not here to hurt me. They can march to the Capitol from here.”Among the banners carried by the mob assaulting the Capitol was a large Confederate flag adorned with an AR-15 and the inscription “Come and Take It”. Other flags depicted Trump carrying an assault rifle. One of the rightwing militias staging the attack, the Oath Keepers, stashed a small armory of AR-15s and other weapons at the ready in a suburban Virginia motel.On 13 July, earlier this month, Trump stepped onto the stage in Butler county, Pennsylvania, where he began by denouncing “the fake news” for not reporting the size of this “big, big, beautiful crowd”. He falsely claimed that Joe Biden had lied about his own crowd sizes, and said: “And we got to bring our country back to health, because our country is going to hell, if you haven’t noticed. Millions and millions of people are pouring in from prisons and from mental institutions.” Trump ripped into “Crooked Joe Biden and laughing Kamala Harris”. He said: “Our country’s been stolen from us … one of the greatest crimes is what they’ve done over four years and hiding what the obvious facts are … .”He was referring to the election of 2020: “I tell you what, we did fantastically in 2016. We did much better in 2020. You know we did much better, and it was rigged. It was a rigged deal.”He turned to talking about people crossing the southern border: “Criminals, we have criminals. We have drug dealers. We have people who should not be here.” On a large screen to the right of his stage, a chart showed how immigration had increased under Biden, though not its recently rapid decrease; he said: “The worst president in the history of our country took over, and look what happened to our country.” Trump turned his head slightly to look at the chart, and said: “And if you, uh, want to really see something that’s sad, take a look at what happened … .” Then the bullet clipped his ear. The shooter with a semi-automatic rifle killed a bystander and critically injured two others.The reborn Trump announced that he would rewrite his acceptance speech to the Republican convention. “It is a chance to bring the country together. I was given that chance,” he said. On the first day of the convention, a Trump-appointed judge, Aileen Cannon, issued a ruling in the national security documents and obstruction case stating that the special prosecutor was illegal, and dismissed the entire case against Trump – a ruling nearly all legal experts regarded as bizarre, partial and likely to be overturned.Trump’s continuing streak of remarkable luck inspired him to descend from his heavenly state into his usual pit of grievance. His idea of bringing the country together is a lengthy self-interested checklist of settling scores. Uneasy rests the crown of thorns. On 15 July, he posted:
      As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts – The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!
      The motive of the 20-year-old shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, remains obscure. From the accounts of those who knew him, he was a quiet boy, awarded a $500 high school prize for his talent at math, who spent two years at a local community college studying engineering, worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home and lived at home. He once gave $15 to a liberal organization, but was a registered Republican. Fellow students remember him as always being a conservative.“He definitely was conservative,” one former classmate told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate.” In a school mock debate, the classmate said: “Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side. That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”Another student recalled that others “tormented Crooks ‘almost every day’ and that he often wore ‘hunting’ outfits to class”. Crooks seems to have recently spent time down the rabbit hole of a pro-gun YouTube channel called Demolition Ranch; when he shot Trump, he was wearing one of its T-shirts, with the slogan “What The Hell”. He had parked his car nearby filled with explosives. Perhaps he intended to ram it into the crowd in a spectacular suicide.Crooks left no letter, no manifesto and no clues on social media. His premeditation did not involve making known his personal motive. He wrote no political statement. Trump’s appearance near his home suddenly gave him an opportunity to strike back. He was a bullied boy.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Why the Trump attack has spawned myriad conspiracies theories – from left and right alike | Colin Dickey

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      Accusations that the assassination attempt on Saturday was staged have proliferated all over social media. Many on the left are arguing that the attack was meant to garner pity for Trump and ensure a kind of “Reichstag fire” scenario so Trump could seize power unilaterally. Many of these focused on the photos of Trump in the immediate aftermath, his fist raised in defiance, as evidence that the entire event was set up to garner sympathy and show the ex-president as unbowed. Meanwhile, on the right, rumours swirled that it was an assassination attempt by President Biden – on Sunday, Alex Jones blasted out an email with a subject line that read in part: “Desperate Deep State Will Try to Assassinate Trump Again”.None of this is surprising – the United States has a long history of presidential assassination and assassination attempts, and a long love affair with conspiracy theories of all kinds. But the ease with which conspiracists of all political alignments have been able to assimilate Saturday’s shocking, unexpected news with their preformed opinions tells us what political conspiracy theories do for people and how they operate.In the wake of breaking, confusing news, conspiracy theories offer the illusory promise of an explanation. Not only that, but a conspiracy theory also offers a narrative of history that is resilient, one that continues to hold up no matter what transpires. If you believe, for example, that the “deep state” is engaged in a long-running, omnipresent campaign to defeat Donald Trump, then anything that happens can be seen as further proof of that.Presidential assassinations – and assassination attempts – are among the most destabilising, confusing and terrifying political events. Alongside major attacks like Pearl Harbor and 9/11, they can change the course of history for ever. So it’s not surprising that such events attract paranoid musings – they proliferate immediately, almost as a sort of self-defence mechanism against the shock of the new.The United States, in particular, has had a long history of yoking conspiracy theories to political assassinations. In 1886, ex-priest Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy wrote a bestseller, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, in which he claimed (among other things) to be a confidant of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had, in fact, represented Chiniquy in 1850 as a young lawyer on a minor matter, but in Chiniquy’s telling, he went on multiple private visits to the White House, where Lincoln purportedly told him that not only were the Catholics behind the civil war, but that if anything were to happen to him, it would be the Jesuits who had pulled the trigger.More recently, they’ve been used to shape reactions in the dramatic aftermath of breaking news. Immediately in the wake of John F Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, everyone from organised crime to the KKK to Cuban exiles to the CIA was accused of being behind the attack – anyone, it seemed, was more plausible than Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone and using an antiquated rifle. Five years later, when Kennedy’s brother Robert was also killed during his presidential candidacy, once again conspiracists alleged that the killer, Sirhan Sirhan, had been brainwashed or was otherwise part of a larger conspiracy.Similar theories surrounded Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, even though he wasn’t a presidential candidate, and this is to say nothing of the various political assassination attempts carried out by the US government in other countries – in Congo, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Indonesia, as well as the successful coup of Salvador Allende in Chile – and the resulting conspiracy theories they engendered. As the US has long been involved in actual conspiracies (including against its own citizens, such as the FBI’s surveillance program Cointelpro, or the CIA’s experimentation on Americans, MKUultra), the problem is not necessarily in entertaining beliefs – rather, the danger is in using them as a filter against breaking news.It’s natural to want to make sense of something that seems to come from nowhere, changing everything and throwing us off kilter – in such moments of disorientation, any kind of explanation can help reestablish some kind of sense to the world. But when news breaks, facts and motives aren’t at all clear, which is when conspiracy theories emerge as a means of filling that gap, providing a narrative that explains everything that’s happened and what it means. It’s why we turn to them again and again, and why they’re not likely to go away anytime soon.For all the certainty these theories have offered regarding the potential impact of Saturday’s act – that it’s clinched Trump’s election, or that it’s proof that the deep state will stop at nothing to bring him down – it’s far too soon to say for sure. Presidential assassinations have certainly had large impacts on American history: had Lincoln lived past 1865, for example, his successor Andrew Johnson wouldn’t have been in a position to kill Reconstruction. But the effects of assassination attempts are harder to measure. The failed assassination of George Wallace didn’t get him any nearer to the presidency in 1972, and the two assassination attempts of President Gerald Ford didn’t save his re-election campaign in 1976.Actual, verified information takes time; law enforcement has said they still know relatively little about the shooter or his motives. In the coming days, some aspects of this story are going to come into crystal-clear focus. Some may, as with the Kennedy assassinations, remain forever murky. Given all we know about the history of the United States’s covert operations, it’s impossible right now to rule out any possibility of some kind of conspiracy. But what remains true is that any such revelations, should they ever come, won’t come from random social media accounts, and they won’t come from Alex Jones.

      Colin Dickey is the author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, and Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy

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      We need to do all we can to lower the anger pervading American politics | Robert Reich

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      My first thought on hearing about the attempted shooting of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday was “I hope to God he’s OK”.I thought this for the usual reasons we human beings hope that other humans are safe from harm.But I had another reason in the case of Donald Trump.Trump has shaped his campaign around his own paranoid martyrdom. I didn’t want anything to add fuel to his dangerous message.It would be unseemly to speak ill of a man who could have lost his life today, but let me remind you of the constant undercurrent of violence in Trump’s messages to his followers during this election. He talks of an America divided between Trump supporters and “enemies within” the nation who are seeking to destroy both him and his followers.On 24 June 2023, after his second indictment, he told his followers:
      “They’re not after me. They’re after you. And I just happen to be standing in their way.”
      The first rally of Trump’s 2024 election campaign on 25 March in Waco, Texas, opened with a choir of men imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection singing Justice for All, intercut with the national anthem and with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with his hand on his heart. Behind, on big screens, was footage from the Capitol riot.Trump then repeated his bogus claim that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged”. He then declared:
      “Our enemies are desperate to stop us and our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will. But they failed. They’ve only made us stronger. And 2024 is the final battle, it’s going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over and America will be a free nation once again.”
      He has conjured up a conspiracy against him, and therefore against his followers.
      “In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
      After Saturday’s attempt on his life, expect more of the same paranoid martyrdom from Trump.Today is no time to dwell on the direct and alarming connection between Trump’s political rise and the increase in political violence and threats of such violence in America.Let me just say that in 2016, the Capitol police recorded fewer than 900 threats against members of Congress. In 2017, after Trump took office, that figure more than quadrupled, according to the Capitol police. The numbers continued to rise every year of the Trump presidency, peaking at 9,700 in 2021. In 2022, the first full year of Biden’s term, the numbers declined to a still-high 7,500. (The 2023 data is not yet available.)Much more to say about all this. For now, though, please join me in doing everything possible to lower the hostility and anger now pervading American politics.And let us pray that Trump, Biden and everyone running for political office and every American engaged in politics remains safe from harm.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Trump is now a member of the mass shooting survivor’s club – will it change anything?

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      The assassination attempt on Donald Trump has put the former president in a category that hundreds of other Americans have been forced into in recent decades: the victim of a high-profile mass shooting.For those who have been at the scene of public shootings or lived through the media whirlwind that followed a loved one’s death to mass violence, the past week has felt like a “rinse and repeat” of more than a decade of this type of violence, said Christian Heyne, the chief officer of policy and programs at Brady, a gun violence prevention organization named after the former White House press secretary Jim Brady, who was shot in the head during an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981.“Every time this type of gun violence happens, it dredges up a lot of trauma,” said Heyne, whose mother was killed and father was injured in a shooting rampage in Thousand Oaks, California, in 2005. In addition to Heyne’s mother, a police officer was killed in the attack, and five other people were injured.After Saturday’s shooting, Heyne was brought back to the day his mother was killed and his community was terrorized. He is troubled that more people now face the trauma he has lived with for nearly 20 years.“The thing that baffles me is that we can be in this cycle of rinse and repeat but we’re not tapping into a conversation about how we prevent the next shooting,” he added.For many like Heyne, Saturday’s shooting was a reminder of their own losses and a stark reminder that gun violence can touch anyone, including a presidential nominee surrounded by armed law enforcement. The policy solutions, they say, are the same they have asked for following every mass shooting tragedy.“The fact that a 20-year-old with an AR-15 was able to get that close to killing a previous head of state is the reason that we have to focus on the gun at the end of the day,” said David Hogg, co-founder of March for Our Lives, a violence prevention group founded after 17 of his classmates were killed at their high school in Parkland, Florida.As the news of the Trump rally flooded television, one of Hogg’s first thoughts was of his mother, who he says is deeply affected by news of shootings. Then, he began calling out what he sees as the fallacy that more guns will ensure protection from mass shootings. “We’re not going to bulletproof our entire society,” he said.Now, he is looking forward with hope that the near-killing of the leader of the Republican party will push lawmakers to build the trust among themselves needed to pass gun policies at the state and federal levels.“The former president of the United States has heightened security and additional Secret Service, and this still happened. We need to change the conversation.“We have to have some semblance of trust between these major party political leaders,” Hogg continued. “Do I think Republicans are actually going to step up to the plate and do something? I don’t think so. But I hope so after the crown jewel of their movement was threatened.”The only similarity Hogg saw between the Parkland shooting and Trump’s assassination attempt was the deluge of conspiracies, speculation and misinformation that have become commonplace following high-profile shootings at Parkland and Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. “This is America, people love conspiracy theories in general,” he said.“There’s this range of public outcry that we continue to live through,” echoed Mark Barden, whose seven-year-old son Daniel was one of 26 people killed in the 2012 tragedy in Connecticut. “There’s sympathy, empathy, outrage and anger. There’s sadness, there’s horror and fear and then conjecture.”After 12 years of advocacy through Sandy Hook Promise, the organization he co-founded with Nicole Hockley another parent whose child was killed in the attack, Barden says he has grown used to the intense news cycle that follows high-profile shootings. He has found a way to move past the ugliest parts of the post-mass shooting news cycle, he said, to focus on spreading awareness about identifying the warning signs and behaviors that often precede mass public violence.“I spend all of my intelligence and mental capital on getting people to know the signs and giving them the tools to make an intervention on themselves or somebody else,” he said.“I think this could be – depending on how this unfolds – a catalyst moment,” Barden said of the rally shooting in Pennsylvania on Saturday. “There’s an opportunity for folks to understand that this doesn’t have to be our way of life.” More

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      ‘Turning down the temperature’ shouldn’t mean silencing all criticism of Trump | Margaret Sullivan

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      Since Donald Trump was injured on Saturday in the chilling assassination attempt at his Pennsylvania rally, the nation has been advised – including by Joe Biden – to reduce the political rhetoric that can lead to violence.“Turn down the temperature,” is the going phrase.That’s a fine idea.But it shouldn’t mean silencing criticism of Trump in this extremely consequential election season. It shouldn’t mean transforming him into some mythic combination of martyr and hero. And it certainly shouldn’t mean that he gets a pass – a literal get-out-of-jail-free card – for his innumerable past misdeeds.The assailant’s bullets didn’t destroy history, and they shouldn’t destroy the rule of law.But we’re already seeing evidence of that.Most notably, the Trump-appointed judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, on Monday issued a stunning ruling that is a huge, although legally questionable, win for the Republican presidential frontrunner. She dismissed the entire case about Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, citing violations of the constitution in the appointment of the special prosecutor Jack Smith.Cannon’s decision, fully in keeping with the way she has leaned hard right at almost every turn, may well be reversed on appeal – “it’s wrong six ways from Sunday,” opined the Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck. Nevertheless, the immediate effect is to delay any consequences for Trump’s apparent malfeasance until after November’s election.It’s likely, of course, that Cannon was headed this way long before the assassination effort this past weekend. But the good will that Trump is garnering makes her ruling much more acceptable, at least to the millions who buy the idea that he has been woefully mistreated by a rigged justice system. And perhaps by others, too.And her action fits perfectly with a broader movement to shut down criticism and accountability for Trump in the wake of the shooting. A lot of former critics are running scared, unwilling to be branded unpatriotic or insensitive in this fraught moment.Trump’s allies, both in politics and media (good luck trying to tell the difference), immediately blamed Democrats for the Pennsylvania attack. The gunman was motivated, they charge, by the left’s constant depictions of Trump as a would-be authoritarian, and therefore any such talk must stop.Not so fast.One, we still don’t know what motivated the 20-year-old assailant, though we do know he was a registered Republican who had ready access to an assault-style weapon; two, Trump himself has bragged that he wants to be a dictator on day one of a second term and his confederates have cooked up a detailed plan to help; and three, if anyone has inflamed the nation’s anger, sense of grievance and propensity for violence, it’s Trump himself with his threats of retribution and promises to persecute his political rivals.Somehow, however, we’re now supposed to believe he’s had a profound spiritual awakening and to forget all that divisiveness, including the Trump campaign email that called Joe Biden a “threat to democracy” just last week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Can we wait to see some evidence before declaring that he is Mandela now?” suggested Tim Miller of the Bulwark, commenting on an Axios report that imagined a kinder, gentler Trump as well as the view from the former Fox News rabble-rouser Tucker Carlson that “getting shot in the face changes a man”.Perhaps, as many are predicting in lofty terms, this assassination attempt will change America forever. Maybe it should.But then again, the slaughter of innocent schoolchildren from Newtown, Connecticut, to Uvalde, Texas, should have done that, but apparently did not.As we wait for that wondrous change, it is more important than ever to hold fast to things that matter. That goes for the news media, for public officials and for American citizens.Let’s be steered not by political opportunism, delusion and blame-casting, but by a more constant north star: the rule of law and the truth.Sympathy for Trump is called for. A free pass is not.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More