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      John Hinckley Jr. and the Madness of American Political Violence

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      In September 2016, three and a half decades after he shot President Ronald Reagan in a deranged bid to impress the actress Jodie Foster — a crime for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity — John W. Hinckley Jr. was released from St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. From there, he moved to Williamsburg, Va., where he lived for some years with his elderly mother, Jo Ann, in a large house overlooking the 13th hole of a golf course. The federal court that granted his release did so on certain conditions. One of these was that he must not speak to the media. Another was that Hinckley, who was a songwriter for some years before the failed assassination attempt, and who continued to play music as part of his psychiatric treatment, must not release for public consumption, even anonymously, any of his work, without the specific approval of the treatment team entrusted with his care.After his arrest, Hinckley was diagnosed with, among other conditions, atypical psychosis and severe narcissistic personality disorder; his extravagantly strange and violent actions had been bound up in a toxic fascination with celebrity and an egomaniacal glee at the fame those actions brought him. Although Hinckley’s treatment was successful, and the judge was satisfied that he presented a very low risk of reoffending, the restrictions were intended to ensure that he neither courted nor was courted by the media and that his mental stability would not be threatened in the immediate aftermath of his release by widespread attention.In 2022, not long after his mother died, the last of those restrictions were lifted. More than four decades after shooting Ronald Reagan — along with a Secret Service agent named Timothy McCarthy, a police officer named Thomas Delahanty and Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was left permanently disabled — he was, at 67 years of age, truly free. Hinckley had by then opened a Twitter account and amassed thousands of followers. On June 15, 2022, the day the restrictions were lifted, he posted the following: “After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!” His following grew, and he quickly began to use his platform to release music and promote upcoming gigs. He announced a total of a dozen performances. Unsurprisingly, these shows got a lot of attention and began to sell out. But every single one of them was canceled before he could play, as a result of backlash, including anonymous threatening emails, received by the venues.This made Hinckley a figure of prurient interest on social media. When he posted about his excitement for an upcoming show, for instance, along with a selfie in which he stared directly at the camera with a glazed and entirely affectless expression, the replies were a chorus of ironic quips and jokes. Someone replied with a GIF of Travis Bickle clapping — a reference to Hinckley’s infamous inspiration for his crime, an obsession with “Taxi Driver” and with Jodie Foster, who played the teenage prostitute Iris in the film. “Haven’t heard his new stuff but I like his earlier work,” read another. (Jokes about Hinckley’s “early work” follow him everywhere online.) For a majority of people who encountered his internet presence, Hinckley was an absurd and quintessentially American aberration: a guy who shot, and very nearly killed, the president and was somehow still alive to sing his songs about peace and love and redemption.Hinckley at his office in Williamsburg, Va., in June.Stefan Ruiz for The New York TimesThen, 43 years after that near assassination, in Butler, Pa., a 20-year-old loner named Thomas Matthew Crooks took several shots at Donald Trump with a semiautomatic rifle, wounding the former president’s right ear and plunging an already dark and chaotic world even deeper into darkness and chaos. Hinckley now became the focus of a different kind of interest. After the shooting, he posted the following message on the platform now known as X: “Violence is not the way to go. Give peace a chance.” He was quoting his old hero John Lennon, who was himself murdered by a strange and sick and lonely young man with a gun. The tweet provoked a by-now predictable response. There were GIFs of Jodie Foster looking haunted (“Hope she sees this bro”) and of Travis Bickle talking to himself in the mirror. There was an article in The Guardian headlined “Man Who Tried to Assassinate Reagan Says ‘Violence Is Not the Way to Go.’ ” Mostly, people seemed to be able to respond to the message only as evidence of the further derangement of things.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Just One Question for Trump and Vance: What Is Wrong With You People?

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      Ever since President Biden’s Sunday announcement that he would not seek re-election, clearly because of age, I keep thinking about Donald Trump’s and JD Vance’s contemptuous reactions to one of the most difficult personal decisions a president has ever made, and what it says about their character.“The Democrats pick a candidate, Crooked Joe Biden, he loses the Debate badly, then panics, and makes mistake after mistake, is told he can’t win, and decide they will pick another candidate, probably Harris,” Trump wrote on social media on Monday. He later added: “It’s not over! Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden’s going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race today!”Not to be out-lowballed by his boss, Vance wrote on social media: “Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way.”All they had to say was: “President Biden served his country for five decades and at this moment we thank him for that service. Tomorrow our campaign begins against his replacement. Bring her on.’’I can guarantee you that is what Biden would have said if the shoe were on the other foot. Because he is not a bully.Biden’s good character shone through on Wednesday night in his dignified, country-before-self address at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. As I watched and listened, I remembered a lunch I had with him in May 2022 in the dining room next to the Oval Office. After we were done and he was walking me past the Resolute Desk, I mentioned to him a reading-literacy project that my wife, Ann, was working on that she thought might interest Dr. Jill Biden. The president got totally excited about the idea and said, “Let’s call your wife. What’s her number?’’He then took a cellphone out of his pocket, dialed it and handed it to me.“Honey,” I said, “I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.’’“I’m in a meeting,” Ann replied. “I can’t talk now.’’“No, no, you’re going to want to talk to him. It’s the president.”Then I handed the phone back to Biden, who engaged her in a conversation about reading and how much his wife was passionate about that subject, too.Look, I’ve been to the rodeo — this is what smart politicians do. But there is one difference with Joe Biden that I observed over the years: It’s how much he authentically enjoyed it, how much he enjoyed talking to people outside his bubble and giving them a chance to say, “I got to meet the president. He talked to me!”That sort of kindness came naturally to him. It brought him joy. And I have no doubt that Trump’s and Vance’s venomous first reactions to Biden’s resignation came naturally to them too.I’m sure it brought them joy. But it sure left me wondering: What is wrong with you people? More

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      Trump Attacks Harris as ‘Radical’ in Charlotte Rally

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      Former President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday blasted Vice President Kamala Harris as radically liberal and blamed her for what he called the Biden administration’s “disastrous” policies, repurposing attacks he had long leveled at President Biden now that Ms. Harris is poised to be his opponent in November.But in a signal of how his campaign strategy may shift after Mr. Biden dropped out of the race and Ms. Harris cleared the field of potential Democratic rivals, Mr. Trump at a rally in Charlotte, N.C., denigrated her time as a prosecutor and attacked Ms. Harris as “radical” on abortion, an effort to undercut what may be two of her strongest arguments to voters.Ms. Harris has vowed to restore nationwide abortion rights, an issue that has galvanized Democrats and lifted their candidates since Supreme Court justices appointed by Mr. Trump overturned Roe v. Wade. She is expected in her campaign to highlight a “prosecutor versus felon” message that will draw attention to her background as a prosecutor while pointing to Mr. Trump’s four criminal cases and 34 felony convictions in Manhattan.Mr. Trump, who earlier this year said he supported states’ setting their own abortion policies, has never appeared particularly comfortable talking about the issue. In Charlotte, he stumbled to pronounce the word “abortion,” as he called Ms. Harris “a total radical” on the issue, then falsely claimed that she supported abortion “even after birth, the execution of a baby,” something no state law supports.Later, Mr. Trump argued that she had been too lax on crime as San Francisco’s district attorney and overly supportive of criminal justice reform policies such as ending cash bail. To underscore his point, he announced that he had received the endorsement of the National Association of Police Organizations, whose president he brought onstage.“Kamala Harris wants to be the president for savage criminals, illegal aliens,” Mr. Trump said to a crowd of thousands in the Bojangles Coliseum, many of whom waved “Back the Blue” signs. “I will be the president for law-abiding Americans.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress: Key Takeaways

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      Here are six takeaways from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to U.S. lawmakers.Israel’s leader traveled some 5,000 miles and did not give an inch.Addressing a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back forcefully on condemnations of Israel’s prosecution of the war in the Gaza Strip. He lavished praise and thanks on the United States for its support. And he gave scarcely a hint that a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and brought protesters out to the streets around the world — including those outside the doors of Congress on the same day as his speech — would be drawing to a close any time soon.Here are some of the highlights.He name-checked both Biden and Trump.Mr. Netanyahu was careful to walk a middle path, thanking both Democrats and Republicans, including President Biden and the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, for their support.“I know that America has our back,” he said. “And I thank you for it. All sides of the aisle. Thank you, my friends.”Mr. Netanyahu said he had known Mr. Biden for 40 years and expressed particular appreciation for his “heartfelt support for Israel after the savage attack” on his country that was led by Hamas on Oct. 7. But he also made a point of praising Mr. Trump, who as president was more receptive to some of his expansionist policies.Mr. Netanyahu also made clear how well he knew his audience, both in the chamber in the country at large. An American university graduate, he delivered a speech fluent in English and ornamented with colloquialisms like “what in God’s green earth.”He denied that Israeli was starving Gazans.Mr. Netanyahu rejected accusations by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court that Israel was deliberately cutting off food to the people of Gaza. “Utter, complete nonsense, a complete fabrication,” he declared.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kamala Harris y su herencia india, más allá de los memes

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      Harris ni presume ni oculta sus raíces indias. Hace una que otra referencia a ellas. También las utiliza estratégicamente.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Para la mayoría de las personas que vieron la cita que circuló esta semana como meme, solo se trataba de algo gracioso que Kamala Harris dijo en un discurso en 2023: “¿Creen que acaban de caerse de un cocotero?”.Sin embargo, para muchos indios e indios estadounidenses, la frase, que Harris atribuyó a su madre, tiene un significado más profundo. Tamil Nadu, el estado del sur de India del que es originaria la familia de su madre, es uno de los mayores productores de cocoteros del país. También es el tipo de cosa que diría un padre o una madre en India.Harris, vicepresidenta y candidata demócrata a la presidencia, ni presume ni oculta su herencia india. De vez en cuando hace alguna referencia. Y también la utiliza estratégicamente.El año pasado, Harris habló de su profunda conexión personal con India en una comida ofrecida en Washington para Narendra Modi, el primer ministro indio, a quien Estados Unidos ha estado cortejando. Su introducción a los conceptos de igualdad, libertad y democracia vino de su abuelo indio, con quien daba largos paseos durante sus visitas a Chennai, explicó Harris.“Fueron estas lecciones que aprendí a una edad muy temprana las que inspiraron mi interés por el servicio público”, afirmó.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      FBI Director Testifying Before Congress Over Trump Rally Shooting

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      The F.B.I. director disclosed that the gunman flew a drone for about 11 minutes, just two hours before the former president was shot during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, disclosed on Wednesday that the gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump appeared to have used a drone to survey the site of the shooting for about 11 minutes in the hours before Mr. Trump took the stage.“It appears that around 3:50 p.m., 4:00, on the day of the shooting, that the shooter was flying the drone around the area,” Mr. Wray said during his testimony, noting that it was “not over the stage, but about 200 yards, give or take, away from that.”The gunfire on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., left Mr. Trump’s ear bloodied, killed a rallygoer who had been sitting in the stands and seriously injured two others.Mr. Wray said the would-be assassin operated the drone about two hours before Mr. Trump spoke at the rally.Secret Service snipers killed the gunman, Thomas Crooks, 20, after locating him on a nearby roof. Mr. Crooks was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and had magazines for the rifle and a bulletproof vest in his car. Mr. Wray confirmed that the F.B.I. recovered eight bullet cartridges from the roof where the gunman opened fire.So far, Mr. Wray said, the F.B.I. has not found a motive for the shooting even as the investigation evolves. But the bureau continues to examine the gunman’s electronic devices for additional clues about Mr. Crooks’s mind-set and movements beforehand.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Demands Equal Airtime in Light of Biden’s Planned Address

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      President Biden is set to address the nation on Wednesday night from the Oval Office to discuss the end of his re-election bid.Ahead of President Biden’s planned prime-time address from the Oval Office on Wednesday night, former President Donald J. Trump and his campaign sent a letter to ABC, NBC and CBS on Tuesday demanding that Mr. Trump be given equal airtime.Mr. Biden is expected to address his decision to end his re-election campaign and outline his plans for the rest of his time in office. In a social media post, he wrote that he would discuss “what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people.”But in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, the Trump campaign’s general counsel, David Warrington, asserted in advance of Mr. Biden’s speech that it would most likely address Mr. Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor.Based on that assumption, Mr. Warrington wrote, “it appears that President Biden’s speech will not be a bona fide news event, but rather, a prime-time campaign commercial.” Citing the Federal Communications Commission’s “equal time” rule, Mr. Warrington insisted that Mr. Trump be given similar time on air, arguing that Mr. Biden’s address was a “campaign speech,” even as Mr. Biden is no longer technically a candidate for the presidency.None of the broadcast networks responded to a request for comment on Tuesday night. A Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to request for comment.The Trump campaign’s letter was a throwback to an earlier, pre-cable era in television, when the broadcast networks were held to strict “public interest” standards to ensure that their local stations aired all sides of the issues and gave candidates equal access to the airwaves.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Super PAC Tied to Elon Musk Is Being Guided by Ex-DeSantis Aides

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      Two Republican operatives who played senior roles helping the presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida have taken on leadership roles in a new pro-Trump super PAC that could spend tens of millions of dollars in the presidential race and has ties to Elon Musk.The aides, Generra Peck, who initially managed the DeSantis campaign, and Phil Cox, a former head of the Republican Governors Association who ran the DeSantis political operation in the years before his run, are quietly guiding the group, America PAC, according to three people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.The super PAC has acquired an air of mystery in the Trump orbit, with other outside groups largely in the dark about its plans. The involvement of Mr. Cox and Ms. Peck may help legitimize it within the Republican establishment as it aims to become one of the leading groups on behalf of Mr. Trump. Ms. Peck and Mr. Cox are two of the party’s most prominent operatives and now lead a public affairs firm, P2 Pathway Public Affairs, and their involvement also helps unify the DeSantis and Trump orbits even further.Also involved, according to a separate person briefed on the matter, is Charlie Spies, a senior election lawyer for the Republican Party. Mr. Spies, Ms. Peck and Mr. Cox declined to comment.The group has taken pains to be secretive. Joe Lonsdale, an Austin-based tech entrepreneur, has played a key role in the group, recruiting many of his friends — including the Jimmy John’s founder, John Liautaud; Antonio Gracias, a former director of Tesla; and the Craft family of Kentucky — to help fund the effort. Mr. Musk, who recently endorsed former President Donald J. Trump and is a friend of Mr. Lonsdale, has described himself as having “created” the group and is expected to donate, but the amount remains unclear.Ms. Peck rose to prominence as the initial campaign manager for Mr. DeSantis’s bid. By the end of the Republican primary race, she had drawn criticism for the Florida governor’s failure to live up to expectations. Mr. Cox worked for outside groups backing Mr. DeSantis during the primary contest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More