"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster," Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote. "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
That's my fancy alibi for my initial suspicion that Donald Trump had staged last week's assassination attempt as a kind of WWE professional wrestling stunt — a suspicion that lasted approximately 30 seconds until the grim reality sank in. Nothing dignifies an absurd opinion like citing Nietzsche, a 19th century German philosopher about whom I know very little.
I do believe that Trump's theatrical instincts, honed by years of WWE extravaganzas and reality TV stardom, kicked in almost immediately as Secret Service agents wrestled him to the floor and dragged him to safety. Hence the iconic photo of the former president gesturing defiantly with blood streaming from his wounded ear.
That's what set me off. Back in the '50s, when Trump and I were lads, grapplers with bleach-blond pompadours were frequently seen on TV from Sunnyside Garden Arena in Queens with blood streaming down their faces from surreptitiously self-inflicted razor cuts. (Even small head wounds bleed copiously.) Dr. Jerry Graham, the melodramatic "heel" who was the great star of the era, and from whom Trump stole his whole act, was a master of the technique.
If you doubt me, Google a video of Trump's low-comedy "WrestleMania" confrontation with WWE impresario Vince McMahon, who'd done a kind of apprenticeship with the late Graham. Clambering into the ring, Trump throws some of the most limp-wristed fake punches in the history of make-believe combat.
It's really quite funny.
So, that's where I was coming from. Everything about those first confusing moments as Trump was dragged to safety said "Sunnyside Garden" to me. Unlike some, however, I took a deep breath before racing to the internet with my screwball first impression.
All indications so far are that Trump's would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was a classic loner of a distinctly American type: an alienated kid with an AR-style assault rifle. As for motive, it's normally futile to seek rational reasons for irrational acts — beyond some twisted desire to die famous, that is.
Almost all of us can list the mass shootings carried out by such individuals off the top of our heads: Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Columbine, Uvalde, Buffalo, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the Las Vegas music festival massacre ...
In Arkansas, where I live, a crazed individual with a shotgun recently murdered several shoppers at a Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce.
These things happen so frequently, most of us have grown numb to them. Does America have more crazy people than anywhere else?
No, but we have more crazy people with AR-15 assault rifles.
Anyway, I have nothing to apologize for. When it came to screwball first impressions, nobody topped Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance. Within hours of the event, he blamed President Joe Biden.
"Today is not just some isolated incident," the Ohio senator tweeted. "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."
Directly, the man said.
Never mind that Vance himself once called Trump "cultural heroin" and speculated that he might become "America's Hitler."
Evidently, he's changed his mind.
Donald Trump the younger was equally accusatory. "Don't tell me they didn't know exactly what they were doing with this crap," he tweeted. "Calling my dad a 'dictator' and a 'threat to Democracy' wasn't some one off comment. It has been the *MAIN MESSAGE* of the Biden-Kamala campaign and Democrats across the country!!!"
Actually, Junior, the first person to call former President Trump a would-be dictator was the former president himself. As for "threat to democracy," he remains under indictment for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election by force. He has also indulged in loose talk about abolishing the Constitution, enabling him to remain in office indefinitely. While nobody's obliged to take him seriously, he did say it.
Trump has also, The New Yorker's David Remnick points out, routinely described Democrats as "scum," "vermin," "animals" and "enemies of the people." When Rep. Nancy Pelosi's 82-year-old husband was bludgeoned with a hammer by a deranged man, Trump made jokes about it. Don Jr. speculated groundlessly that the assault stemmed from a gay lovers' quarrel.
In short, Biden has done all the apologizing he ever needed to do for saying he wanted to put Trump "in the bull's-eye" during a private conversation with donors. It's preposterous to think that comment motivated Trump's would-be assassin.
I'd also have to see a very different Donald J. Trump before accepting him as the "unifier" he's currently pretending to be.
Fat chance.
Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President.”
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