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The second assassination attempt against Donald Trump gave us a moment of profound insight.
“My father hates Trump,” said the son of the would-be assassin, “like every reasonable person does.”
Who are these reasonable haters, you may ask?
Let’s begin with the sitting president of the United States, Joe Biden, whose reason may be clouded by the passage of time but whose opinions on the subject are sharp enough. According to Biden, Trump must be considered, if not exactly armed, then “dangerous,” as the leader of “an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy.” Trumpism is an “assault on democracy,” “a threat to our democracy” — in short, “semi-fascism,” the president has declared.
What reasonable person would refuse to hate a semi-Mussolini?
Certainly not Kamala Harris, vice president and Democratic Party candidate for the presidency.
“Trump is a danger to our troops, our security, and our democracy,” Harris tells us. The former president, Harris has said, masterminded “the worst attack on democracy since the Civil War.”
What reasonable person wouldn’t hate the second coming of Jefferson Davis?
Since Trump is a Republican, Democrats in general tend to score very high on the hate meter. Here’s David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign: “It is not enough to beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not be allowed to rise again.”
Here’s Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman of New York: “It is unquestionable that [Trump] cannot see public office again. He is not only unfit, he is destructive of our democracy, and he has to be eliminated.”
And let’s not forget Hilary Clinton, who in her day portrayed Trump as the headman of a ragged band of “deplorables” — “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.” More recently, Clinton warned the non-deplorable portion of the population that a Trump victory in November “would be the end of our country as we know it.”
Members of the news media yield to no one in their reasonable hatred of Trump, although it must be said that they lack originality. Whereas the Democrats’ hatred, as we have seen, is a many-splendored thing, presenting the threat of the Orange Man as anything between the Beast of the Apocalypse and the return of the Old Confederacy, the media seem stuck on the question of authoritarianism.
Here is a New York Times headline: “Trump’s dire words raise new fears about his authoritarian bent.”
Or the Economist: “Donald Trump poses the greatest danger to the world in 2024.”
Or the Guardian: “A second Trump term will be far more autocratic than the first.”
Or Politico: “Trump is an authoritarian. So are millions of Americans.”
You get the picture. Trump is worse than the war in Ukraine, the October 7 atrocity, the possibility of nuclear war with China over Taiwan or with Iran over Israel — worse than inflation, crime, runaway immigration — the worst, most annihilating and head-bursting authoritarian horror that the news media, in their limited imagination, can apparently conceive.
Magazine covers favor dark expressionist colors: Trump with a Hitler mustache, Trump driving a caged Republican elephant to perdition.
What reasonable person wouldn’t hate the worst of the worst?
And needless to say, the latest failed attempt at assassination changes nothing. On the day after, the Los Angeles Times ran the following headline: “Think Trump isn’t really serious about being a dictator? Think again.”
If the journalists are stuck in a Trump rut, Hollywood and the entertainment industry are far more creative in demonstrating their hate. This goes beyond the production of movies that show an appropriately brainless Trump-like president engineering the literal destruction of the Earth. A TV comedienne and the lead singer of a famous rock band, for example, have each held up, for the delectation of the audience, what looked like Trump’s severed head.
That’s a better shtick than the lame Hitler mustache. Robert De Niro, strutting his stuff, has called the former president “a jerk,” “an idiot,” “a clown” and a “gangster.” George Clooney, more conventionally, has said he’s “a xenophobic fascist.”
“If Donald Trump becomes president,” says Jennifer Lawrence, “that will be the end of the world” — precisely like in the movie in which she starred.
When we look with detachment at the phenomenon of Trump hatred by reasonable persons, we find that these include, disproportionately, the most powerful, famous and influential people in the country — those who run the institutions of government, learning, culture — individuals who consider themselves superior in every way and expect their opinions to be heeded. For reasons they will expound vehemently and at length, Trump appears as a monstrous insult to their class.
To their credit, they have not been idle.
The weight of the great institutions, and the hatred of their lords and masters — reasonable persons all — has fallen on Trump like an avalanche. He has been accused of being a Russian agent, a Nazi sympathizer, an insurgent against the US government — he has been impeached twice by a Democrat-run House, indicted five times in Democrat-friendly jurisdictions, convicted once, fined an enormous amount of money.
In addition, he has been tag-teamed in the presidential campaign, as the defenders of democracy overthrew the candidacy of the doddering Biden for the much more reasonable Harris. Twice he has come within range of an assassin’s rifle, with a bullet barely missing its target, leaving him with a bloody ear.
It’s a wonder that he has not been broken. It’s even more perplexing that he remains competitive in the presidential race, although this will no doubt be fixed with the proper maneuvers in due time. Still, the fundamental question about Trump concerns none of these things.
King Henry II, enraged at his old friend Thomas Becket for turning against him after becoming archbishop of Canterbury, shouted to his retainers: “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Soon after, Becket was on his way to sainthood, having been murdered by Henry’s men.
Every day, a hundred times a day, unambivalently, from the most powerful, influential and authoritative voices, we hear a similar question being asked: Who will rid us of this dangerous usurper? In our fractured and distempered society, it sounds like an invitation. There are plenty of disordered minds among us who mix hunger for attention with the glorification of violence.
They hear the call. Where the reasonable hate so starkly, the unreasoning, we may be sure, feel free to act.
The only meaningful question we should ask about Trump isn’t political but existential: How is this man still alive?