Assassination attempt reframed the presidential race — and Trump himself

The image taken by photographer Evan Vucci is so perfect at first I thought it was doctored. 

Donald Trump, larger than life, stretches toward the sky in the act of shaking a defiant fist, bloodied but still formidable, still a fighter, while an enormous American flag covers the background and, in the foreground, a female Secret Service agent hugs the former president in a moving mater dolorosa pose. 

It’s a brilliant triangular composition in the best Renaissance style. The murderous assassination attempt at Butler, Pennsylvania, will always be remembered because of it. The central subject, Trump, will never be the same.

The people who hate Trump do so to an insane degree, and see him as a sort of biblical monster, an Antichrist come to inaugurate the End of Days. I will have more to say about them in a moment.

But there are a few of us who haven’t loved Trump for the opposite reason: the unbearable lightness of being that attached itself to his actions. 

Trump is a creature of popular culture – a terrific entertainer in the modern manner. He’s funny in a weird, unsettling way, he’s vulgar when he’s supposed to be respectful, and he’s comically vicious to his antagonists. 

The whole act seems devised to attract attention to himself in all times and places – something he has been extraordinarily successful in accomplishing. Trump’s followers can’t get enough of him. His detractors are even worse.

The man has been with us for eight years as a dominant public figure. In that span, he has demonstrated strong political skills but few visible moral virtues. He doesn’t drink. He seems to be a good father.

Otherwise he comes across as a rich hedonistic loudmouth who has allowed few principles to interfere with life’s many pleasures.

That’s not a disqualifier. The country had a solid eight years with the incorrigible Bill Clinton – leadership skills or even dumb luck can sometimes compensate for personal weakness.

But we want more. Given our present circumstances, we need more. Presidents are the roofbeams of the constitutional order.

We need them to be high and straight. We need, in the flawed human who embodies the office, some exemplary quality, some grace beyond ambition, to justify the public’s trust.

That’s what the deadly shooting at Butler, and the perfect image that will forever capture the moment, have done for Trump. 

In a few seconds of violence, an uncanny transformation took place. Surrounded by death and stark terror, with blood flowing from a wounded ear, Trump displayed truly admirable courage and command. 

His gesture of defiance reassured the MAGA multitudes around him and also those watching afterwards – reassured them not only that he was physically unimpaired but, more importantly, that the fight his presidential campaign represented to them was still on. 

He took the rage of his supporters over the episode and converted it into pride. By doing so, he may well have prevented our country from tipping over into the abyss.

The entertainer has risen above himself. Of course, the old narcissist is still there.

Trump will continue to say things that drive his opponents crazy and make his well-wishers cringe. People rarely change their style even under altered circumstances.

But after Butler, nothing can be quite the same. Most of us feel the difference, though we find it hard to put into words. 

The closest I can come to it is this: Trump has been reframed. He has become a living symbol, a protesting fist raised to the sky for millions of Americans who wish to assert their equality against the predations of the ruling elites.

The cheesy golden escalator and the Mar-a-Lago glitter have been left behind – and Trump, strange to say, is approaching the realm of myth.

At the Republican National Convention that took place in Milwaukee only 48 hours after he was shot, the former president seemed aware that he now stood on a different plane. He looked pensive and subdued.

His speech at the convention revealed an unsuspected human side to an abrasive man. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he said, his voice catching with emotion.

In a strangely reverential gesture, he kissed the fireman’s helmet belonging to Corey Comperatore, who had been killed while protecting his family in the Butler firefight.

The speech teemed with positive exhortations: “We are Americans. Ambition is our heritage. Greatness is our birthright … It is a story of love, sacrifice, and so many other things.” 

Although he rambled on for 92 minutes, Trump, possibly for the first time in his life, managed to say nothing that was shocking or controversial.

All this is terrible news to the institutional actors – starting with the administration but including journalists, academics, and movie stars – who have dedicated the last eight years to inventing ever more extreme expressions of horror and hatred on the subject of Trump.

I’m not going to compile a list of what has been said and done. Others, more patient than I am, have taken up this task – let me recommend my favorite, Matt Taibbi.

But a bare summary makes extraordinary reading. Those who feel politically threatened by the former president have impeached him twice, indicted him on a shotgun spray of charges in four separate jurisdictions, convicted him of a crime few Americans could describe.

They have tried to drive him to bankruptcy, silenced him with a gag order, restricted his mobility, arbitrarily removed his name from the ballot.

Comparisons to Hitler are so routine as to be farcical: the most recent cover of TNR shows a portrait of Trump sprouting a Hitler mustache and morphing into the German dictator.

In a depressing burst of infantile nihilism, several commentators have called for Trump to be killed.

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Here’s the latest on the assassination attempt against Donald Trump:

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The campaign of vilification is unparalleled in my lifetime, and it has had an obvious political purpose.

Trump, we are told, isn’t merely wrong or bad. He’s an abomination: the Antichrist. All decent persons have a sacred duty not just to oppose but to destroy him. 

To this end, he must be walled off in a moral ghetto that only “deplorables” will wish to enter: degenerates who are willing to be labeled “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it,” in Hilary Clinton’s famous formula.

Afraid of the social consequences, many Trump supporters have kept their opinions to themselves.

That, too, has changed after Butler. The walls of the ghetto have come tumbling down. 

Calling for the destruction of a wounded target of assassination is, to put it mildly, not a good look. President Biden pulled his campaign advertisement off the air – we can guess how Trump was portrayed in those ads. 

Left-leaning MSNBC temporarily suspended its rabidly anti-Trump “Morning Joe” program. Facebook suddenly felt the urge to restore Trump’s account because Americans “should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis.”  

The former president’s adherents began to emerge from the catacombs. Elon Musk formally endorsed Trump on the very day of the shooting. So did hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman. The endorsement of Silicon Valley legend Marc Andreessen came during the convention.

MAGA hats proliferated in progressive San Francisco, while in deep blue Manhattan a spontaneous cavalcade, American flags flying from the vehicles, celebrated noisily in front of Trump Tower. 

To the extent that Trump has merged with Vucci’s mythical image of him, Trumpism has been normalized.

And to the extent that Trumpism is normalized, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are deprived of the Trump-is-Hitler narrative that was, at the same time, the highest dogma of the progressive church and the single issue on which they were prepared to gamble the November election.

Trump doesn’t even need heroic status. If voters just perceive him as a regular politician rather than a mad dictator, the Democrats are left with nothing.

Because of this, many observers have come to believe that the presidential election was decided amid the bloodshed at Butler. “The presidential contest ended last night,” said a “veteran Democratic consultant.” “It’s over,” mourned another despairing Democrat. Conversely, the Republicans celebrating in Milwaukee looked confident to the point of certainty.

This is an error, for at least two reasons. 

First, the country remains sharply divided with few voters to be persuaded either way: people’s minds were made up long ago.

Even after President Biden was exposed as a confused and incoherent senior in his debate with Trump, and after the latter’s epic reaction at Butler, the opinion polls have moved very slightly.

Second, if there’s anything the last few weeks have taught us, it’s the power of events to obliterate conventional wisdom.

There are wars raging abroad and terrorists eager to pounce at home. Biden is likely to be replaced by a more vigorous Democratic candidate.

Four months are left before Election Day – in the internet age, an eternity.

Anything can happen.

The significance of the events at Butler, and of the images from that awful day, is that they have shifted the course of the electoral campaign in an unexpected direction.

Trump will be harder to demonize. That is unquestionably to his advantage.

The race isn’t over – but it has been reframed.