Following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his Pennsylvania rally last weekend, his allies at the Republican National Convention are downright elated over the turn of events, wrote Amanda Marcotte for Salon — and already making plans to use it as a political weapon.
"Trump is leaning into this with all the subtlety of a pro wrestler," wrote Marcotte. "In a video that leaked Tuesday, Trump is heard on speakerphone talking to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about his injury, which he described as like being bitten by 'the world’s largest mosquito.' But when Trump showed up at the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Monday night, he was sporting a comically oversized bandage on his ear. The crowd responded by chanting, 'Fight, fight, fight!'"
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Trump's allies tried to blame the whole thing on President Joe Biden and Democrats, either through outright conspiracy theories they orchestrated it, or because their warnings the former president poses a danger to democracy supposedly incited it. There is no evidence to support this; the shooter appears if anything to have Republican roots.
Nonetheless, Marcotte wrote, Republicans are "eager" to use the shooting, and speculation about motive, to try to confuse one of the key issues voters still don't trust Trump on: the preservation of democracy and the rule of law.
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"People on the ground at the RNC are eager to use this shooting to deflect the entirely correct accusation that Republicans, by nominating the man who incited the January 6 insurrection, are the ones endorsing political violence," wrote Marcotte. "Instead, they used the shooting to level false accusations at President Joe Biden's administration. One delegate from North Carolina claimed, 'We don't really have a lot of trust in the agencies that are going to be doing an investigation.' She hoped for a private investigation because 'there's a lot of questions' about 'the FBI and who they really work for.'"
Ultimately, she wrote, Republicans care little about Trump as a human being, or about the man who died in that crowd. They just care about a rallying cry to vent their grievances about fellow Americans they hate. "That's why their response to Trump playing up his minor injury with a diaper-sized bandage was not to commiserate with his pain. Instead, the crowd chanted, 'Fight, fight, fight!'"
