EXCLUSIVE: The Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump

I first heard about it at the bar:

“Did you hear about Trump’s new piercing?” the first bartender asked the second.

“Was it the gay ear?” a patron asked.

“It wasn’t a piercing at all, it went through one ear and out the other unobstructed” the second bartender replied.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh, someone took a few shots at Trump, but only hit his ear” the second bartender told me.

“Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him?” another patron asked.

“Are you sure it wasn’t Kennedy?” someone else asked.

“Tends to run in the family…” I muttered. “What about the suspect? Motive? I haven’t heard about this at all” I said.

“He was trying to impress Jodie Foster” the first bartender joked. The whole bar was yukking it up, and though I was chuckling too, I couldn’t drink. Living through yet another major historical event was making me sick. The next day, I combed headlines and sifted through speculation.

Here are the facts: former president Donald Trump was shot at by a white male from a nearby rooftop. Trump’s right ear was sliced, but he was otherwise unharmed. The shooter, now dead, was spotted by rallygoers, local police, and secret service before firing at the Republican presidential nominee. The only fatality, Corey Comperatore, was killed by the shooter’s stray bullets.

The Tinfoil Hat Society is still speculating on the shooter’s motivation, party loyalty, and whether or not this was a “false flag” or staged event intended to create sympathy for Trump. Those facts will come to light as the investigation continues.

What’s interesting to watch in real-time, however, is how Trump loyalists are reacting to the assassination attempt. Trump’s vice president pick, Senator J.D. Vance, immediately pointed the finger at Biden stating that “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,” completely ignoring the authoritarian fascist attitude of Trump and the policies outlined in Project 2025. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote that “Democrats wanted this to happen,” despite former president Barack Obama stating he was thankful Trump wasn’t seriously hurt and wishing a quick recovery to his successor, while Joe Biden made a special address to condemn political violence. Nancy Pelosi, who was a target of the insurrectionist mob that breached the capitol on January 6th of 2021, and wife of Paul Pelosi, who was attacked in their home in 2022, also condemned the violence against Trump.

Meanwhile, Tim Scott writes “...Democrats and their allies in the media have recklessly stoked fears, calling President Trump and other conservatives threats to democracy. Their inflammatory rhetoric puts lives at risk.” Again, ignoring conservative fear-mongering and broad threats that have been present since before Obama, and only growing more intense since the election of Trump in 2016. Recently, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the organization that created Project 2025, says the country is “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” This remark was made to former U.S. Representative Dave Brat who is guest hosting the “War Room” podcast in place of Steve Bannon, who is serving a four-month prison term for defying a congressional subpoena in the investigation of January 6th. Trump responded to Bannon’s imprisonment by saying “Biden is going to pay a big price for it.”

So, the politicians who are threatening a revolution and that Biden “is going to pay,” who have stoked the fires of political violence against Whitmer and Paul Pelosi, called the LGBTQ+ community filth after the death of Nex Benedict, repeatedly called immigrants and muslims “terrorists,” and courted racist ideologies that lead to the massacres in El Paso and Buffalo are accusing the Democrats of violent rhetoric?

To claim that the Dems are calling the Conservative’s bid for the presidency “fascist” and “totalitarian” is an indisputable fact. But they’re calling it for what it is: the goal of Project 2025 is to establish the U.S. as a theocracy and cripple democracy as we know it. No sane policy plan would: ban contraceptives, ban abortions, raise taxes on the working class, eliminate unions, cut social security and medicare, eliminate the department of education, mandate Christian teachings in schools, ban curriculum about slavery, end climate protections, end marriage equality, allow the military to break up protests, deport immigrants en masse, and end birth right citizenship. But at no point have the democrats called their supporters to violence against conservatives.

The suggestion that they would is a gross deflection of the behaviors the right wing has perpetuated and escalated since the election of Obama and should be given no more validity than any of the other conspiracy theories being proposed. Mike Johnson condemned the shooting as an “horrific act of political violence” but later demanded to “know the truth” about the attempt. Mike Collins claimed “Joe Biden sent the orders.” The favored conspiracy theory on the right, which lines up with the perceived persecution of their party’s leader, is that Biden ordered Trump’s assassination. This is easily proven untrue given that the shooter missed, killing a civilian instead, and that this may be the sloppiest assassination attempt of all time. Even if Biden did order his opponent’s assassination as an official presidential order, the Supreme Court just made such an act legal with their ruling that “a former president [has] some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office.”

Another conspiracy comes outside of the Republican party, with tinfoil hatters online claiming that this was all a publicity stunt. The WWE TV star slammed a fake blood capsule against his head to generate sympathy among undecided voters who have been living under a rock for the last ten years. But this theory holds about as much water as an of the others mentioned.

Are the Democrats the “good guys?” Ask the civilians killed by U.S. bombs. Are the Republicans any better? Ask the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, and working class people being bled dry by harmful policies written by conservative lawmakers. The echoes of retaliation from Russian bots and red-pilled dupes online is nothing more than that: saber-rattling.

A civil war is indeed being fought within the United States at this very moment, but it is not one of “red vs. blue.” No, our fight is between the honest people trying to get by, and the politi/corporate kleptocracy dismantling the American Dream. They’ve been getting away with it for years, if only we knew how to fight back.