What happened yesterday - perhaps less an assassination attempt than the CONCEPT of an assassination attempt - is yet to play out politically. The alleged potential assassin - presuming that was what he was doing, the guy is nuts - does seem more likely to have a political motive than the Butler shooter. The kid in Pennsylvania was looking to kill and die famous, in the manner of Dylan Klebold and Adam Lanza. He was at the very least Right Leaning, if not an outright Republican.
Ryan Routh, the suspect in custody, seems to be more "political" but his politics are a mess. If his Twitter feed is to be believed, he voted for Trump in 2016, then supported Tulsi Gabbard and maybe Elizabeth Warren in 2020. This past winter, he was supportive of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. That's...eclectic.
The through line for me is that he is clearly mentally unwell. His previous history suggests someone with obvious mental health issues. He said he travelled to Ukraine to help organize Afghan fighters to fight for Ukraine. Ummm...what? He seems to be opposed to "the Man" in whatever form that takes for him in any given moment. Who's the outsider? The plucky underdog?
That's how you support Trump in 2016, but Gabbard and Andrew Yang four years later. It's not ideological, it's about the person who's outside "the System" even if they are ideologically opposites. Once Trump becomes President, he IS the System and needs to be opposed. I would be shocked if Routh wasn't a huge fan of Joe Rogan's and that sort of glib anti-government posturing. I am shocked that wasn't a huge RFK Jr fan.
The fact that the Secret Service actually did a pretty good job yesterday seems lost in the inevitable posturing by Trumpists and others. Routh was a quarter mile away from Trump when he was discovered and didn't get a shot off. There was no dramatic image like in Butler.
How will this play out? I don't think it will have much impact, for the simple reason that the first one didn't exactly upend the race. That attempt was dramatic and TV-ready. The blood trickling down his face, the "fight" moment. That was Trump's best moment in 9 years as a political figure.
And it didn't matter.
In fact, here's what I think the political fallout from this will be:
- Trump will go berserk trying to fundraise off this. His minions will try and shut down any criticisms of Trump as being incitement. That will fail.
- A lot of people in the middle will look at this and sigh, more drama. Trump is exhausting. It's always something with this guy: indictments, impeachments, insurrections, assassinations attempts. Can't we just move on?
- We were not that far from Trumpists committing acts of terrorism anyway, so there is going to be something tragic in the next few weeks, I fear. A school or government building will be shot up or bombed. It just feels inevitable. Trumpists will try and bothsides it away, but it won't work.
- In the end, Routh himself will fade quickly from the news, unless there is some other major shoe to drop. Look, this is America. Of course we let a mentally ill man with a criminal record get his hands on an AK47. Will this change America's gun laws? You're hilarious. (Although Democrats should 100% introduce the Protect Donald Trump Gun Safety legislation tomorrow.) We let lunatic slaughter school kids and a few days later we've moved on; Routh never even got off a shot.
Part of Donald Trump's "appeal" especially in 2016 was as a chaos agent. "I alone can change it." He was the disrupter for a corrupt system. That's why Routh (allegedly) supported him back then. People are tired of the chaos, tired of the dysfunction. Biden's signal "failure" as president was his promise to make politics boring again, without taking the steps to remove Trump from the political stage. Of course he was going to run again; fuck Merrick Garland for dragging his feet.
I don't see this accruing sympathy to Trump, and sadly I think Springfield could get even more scary.
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