Terry Glavin: Maybe Joe Biden should stop saying Trump will destroy democracy

Democrats and Republicans are far too comfortable with apocalyptic rhetoric

Published Jul 14, 2024 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 5 minute read

Images of Donald Trump appear on stage screens in the Fiserv Forum on the day before the Republican National Convention (RNC) on July 14, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The RNC will be held in Milwaukee from July 15-18. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

What is perhaps most astonishing about Saturday’s attempted assassination of former U.S. president Donald Trump is just how close Trump came to death. It was a matter of centimetres. A bullet from an AR-15 rifle, fired from a distance of 150 metres, nicked Trump’s ear.

It’s almost as amazing that it’s taken this long for somebody to make a serious attempt on Trump’s life.

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Here’s President Joe Biden only two weeks ago: “Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. That is not hyperbole. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He is literally a threat to the America that we stand for.” But it’s no less remarkable that Trump’s own incendiary imbecilities haven’t yet incited any of his more avid supporters to take a shot at Biden, who Trump continues to insist is an illegitimate president who stole the 2020 election by fraud and fake ballots.

Here’s how Trump formally kicked off his presidential campaign last year: “If we don’t win this next election, 2024, I truly believe our country is doomed. . . I think it’s doomed.”

It matters much less whether Trump or Biden is right or wrong than whether the American people can figure out a way to force their country’s political class to calm the hell down. If this keeps up, the whole country will be in flames, and it will hardly matter whether the preponderance of blame should fall on the Republicans or the Democrats.

For the moment, it would help if Americans kept in mind who really was to blame, in the real world, for what happened on Saturday at that campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Despite what you may have heard on X, which normal people call Twitter, it wasn’t the Jews. It wasn’t Italian football fan Marco Violi. It wasn’t a “false flag” operation. It wasn’t antifa, and it wasn’t a failed “deep state” job by the Secret Service.

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The shooter was a 20-year-old former high school math whiz by the name of Thomas Matthew Crooks, from Bethel Park, about an hour’s drive south of Butler. Federal finance records show he was a registered Republican, although when he was 17 he made a $15 donation to a Democratic Party donation platform. Butler was shot and killed. A rally attendee was also killed in the mayhem.

There will be hell to pay for how it came to pass that Crooks managed to situate himself on a nearby roof with an AR-15, in full view of several people who attempted to alert police. But these will be matters of mere detail.

Before Saturday, quite apart from the challenge they faced from a reinvigorated Trump campaign, the Democrats were already in turmoil over mounting alarms and deep divisions about President Biden’s mental and physical frailty, and between now and November’s presidential election, anything can happen. August’s Democratic Party nomination convention in Chicago could very well degenerate into a Free Palestine or Oust Biden catastrophe along the lines of the violence and anarchy of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago at the height of the Vietnam War protests.

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The Republicans are heading into their own nomination convention on Monday. Trump’s base, which was already wildly enlivened by their scandal-ridden candidate’s persistence in favourable poll ratings, should be expected to burst through the doors of the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee like a Force Five Hurricane. They’ll be coming to Wisconsin with a particularly stirring image burned into their heads.

It’s that one picture from Saturday’s rally, the one captured so perfectly by the Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci: A defiant Trump, blood on his cheek, rising above a clutch of Secret Service guards with his right arm raised in a clenched fist, with the Stars and Stripes and a bright blue sky as a backdrop.

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. president Donald Trump is surrounded by Secret Service agents at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, following an assassination attempt. Photo by Evan Vucci /THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

It’s a safe bet that the tone of the convention will be menacing.

This is J.D. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy author and frontrunner to stand as Trump’s running mate, on Saturday: “Today is not just some isolated incident. 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.”

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House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who was seriously injured in 2017 when a left-wing Democrat went on a shooting spree targeting Republicans practising for a charity baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia, echoed Vance’s line of thinking: “For weeks Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America. Clearly we’ve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”

It’s a pity Scalise’s own party and Vance’s own preferred presidential candidate haven’t followed that advice.

Saturday’s event in Butler was Trump’s final rally in a campaign that began last March in Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the bloody raid by several federal and state agencies on the Branch Davidian cult’s Waco compound that ended after five weeks and the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including at least 20 children, along with four federal agents.

Around the time of his Waco rally, Trump was carrying on about the “potential death and destruction” that would result if New York prosecutors followed through with the hush-money charges he was facing involving the porn star Stormy Daniels. Accusing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of acting on behalf of “radical left lunatics,” Trump warned: “Our country is being destroyed, as they tell us to be peaceful.” Trump’s intimations of justifiable violence have been a campaign staple, ever since.

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At least Trump is consistent. He’s been showing that he’s comfortable with political violence ever since Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the U.S. capitol building. He’s called the dozens of insurrectionists charged or convicted of crimes from that day “patriots” and “hostages,” vowing to pardon them if he wins the November race to the White House.

The one thing Biden’s camp and Trump’s camp both agree on is that the United States itself is at the precipice of collapse. Maybe they’re both right. Maybe they’re both the reason why.

Maybe they should stop before it’s too late.

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