It’s OK. You can admit it because we are all discussing it. Right after you heard those pops, not long after you saw the former president helped to his feet with blood running down his face and seconds after you saw the fist pump and the mouthed exhortation to ‘fight,’ it slipped into your mind: “This ain’t real. This is staged. He cooked this up...”
Remember these whoppers? Barack Obama might have been born outside of the United States, and should never have been eligible to serve as president. Not true. Trump’s inaugural crowd was bigger than Obama’s. Not true. Trump would build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and Mexico would pay for it. Not true. Bleach might cure COVID. Not true. Crime is running rampant. Not true. The 2020 presidential election was stolen, and Trump actually won it. Not true. Trump didn’t have sex with that woman, Stormy Daniels…you get the point.
Trump’s tales are often as tall as the buildings with his name on them.
But this? A fake assassination attempt?
It would be outrageous, audacious and all kinds of dangerous.
We are a country steeped in political violence. A South Carolina pro-slavery zealot nearly beat an abolitionist in the U.S. Senate to death on the floor of the Senate in 1856. Four of our presidents have been assassinated. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sen. Bobby Kennedy - all dead by an assassin’s bullet.
Don’t let anyone say this isn’t who we are. It IS who we are. It is who we have always been.
But we’ve also always tried NOT to be this way. Ever wonder why members of Congress address each other with such strained formality? “The congressman from Louisiana,”...or “my friend from New York…”
Well, how do you think Hakeem Jeffries would refer to Mike Johnson if there were no rules of decorum? How do you think Jasmine Crockett and Marjorie Taylor Greene might have gotten down a couple months ago after Taylor Greene made a comment about Crockett’s “fake eyelashes” in a congressional hearing?
It is precisely because we’re always one slight away from jacking up someone else that calls for violence and even an embrace of calls for violence are - or should have been - beyond the pale in politics.
It wasn’t cool or funny when Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise, a Republican, got shot at a congressional baseball game. It wasn’t meme-worthy when Paul Pelosi, husband of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, was bludgeoned with a hammer at their home in San Francisco.
Political violence is a thing in these United States. It is not beyond the pale - not at all - that some deranged nut decided to take a shot at Trump.
There can and will be debate about how this affects the race. There can and will be speculation about how Trump’s supporters and President Joe Biden respond to this.
But there can also be no debate that, in a country where guns are nearly as easy to get as bubblegum, some crazy person might well have decided to take a shot at the former president.
That’s not a hot take or a deep fake. But where to go from here? That’s a question in which we all have a stake.