A 20-year-old registered Republican opened fire with a rifle at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, killing one MAGA-head and wounding two critically, but merely grazing Trump's ear, who benefited from a very photogenic streak of blood on his face. Not missing a beat, he defiantly raised a fist for the photographers. (The shooter was also said to have given a small donation to a Democratic-Party-linked organization.)
Conveniently, the Secret Service executed the would-be assassin on the spot. So no Lee Harvey Oswald or James Earl Ray or Sirhan Sirhan, left alive to complicate the propaganda story for the spinners of the legend that will be planted around this event and become official "history." (Just saying.)
The shooter was obviously not trained as a sniper. If he had been, he would have known not to go for a headshot. Heads are a smaller target than torsos, and move around more. (This I learned from a youtube video, which the shooter could have easily done too, had he made a decent effort to prepare himself. I have a lifelong interest in military matters, which is how I came to watch such a video.) The young shooter was probably misled by entertainment industry garbage featuring make-believe assassins. Then again, Trump may well have been wearing a bullet"proof" vest. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as an absolutely bulletproof vest. Such protective devices come in various levels of protection, depending on the type of projectiles they are designed to stop. Still, the shooter would have been wiser to aim just below the throat, or make for himself copper-tipped bullets, for example, which have greater penetrating power than the soft lead that most bullets are made from. (Bullets made from harder metals are outlawed for the public, under pressure from police, who branded them as "cop-killer" bullets.)
The Democrats immediately made things worse for themselves by spewing hysterical rhetoric, as if Trump was their beloved grandmother. Instead of issuing pro-forma "expressions of concern" and stuff like "of course we condemn violence," they went into overdrive, as if to prove their loyalty to Trump. Top Democratic politicians fulminated that they were "shocked" and "horrified" and condemned the attack in the strongest terms. Contrast that with how Republicans would respond to a violent attack on Biden. They would issue lukewarm, milktoast expressions of concern, while some of them, and especially their various fascist auxiliaries, would blame Biden and the Democrats for bringing the attack on themselves. In the shooting at the Trump rally, the despicable J.D. Vance has already blamed the DEMOCRATS for the shooting, because of their rhetoric. Vance, a totally amoral hustler, parlayed a book and his strategic move of linking himself to Trump into a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio, and now the vice-presidential pick by Trump after only a year and a half as a Senator. He is one of many ambitious, ethical-and-conscience-free self-promoters who have attached themselves to Trump, like suckerfish hitching a ride on a shark's body.
The Democrats, if they weren't so lame, would learn something from Vance and make insinuating remarks about how Trump's long history of violent rhetoric and incitement (most especially his failed coup attempt of January 6, 2021 which Republicans and their propagandist auxiliaries like Tucker Carlson now insist was a peaceful rally!) has come back to bite him. They could remark that "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword." They could mention how Trump sent a U.S. Marshal's death squad to execute Antifa fighter Michael Reinoehl. (They wouldn't because they fully supported that murder, as did the U.S. media. The eyewitnesses to the execution reported that Reinoehl was summarily gunned down on sight without warming.
Instead the Democrats instinctively obeyed Trump's call for "unity" and united in wishing Trump well, expressing great relief that he was unharmed, and on and on. Pathetic, and typical of Democratic Party weakness. This weakness is a big reason Trump will probably beat Biden (or whoever) in November. People follow "leaders" who seem strong. Feeble, senile, fumbling over his words, slurring his speech, tripping on stairs Biden projects weakness. And "debating" Trump while in the throes of a senility episode starkly illustrated his weakness and incapacity. This man insists on being president of the United States for four more years? Both he and his party are demented.
Biden's handpicked U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, a man deprived of a Supreme Court seat by Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, called the botched (deliberately?) shooting "an attack on democracy." Well if Trump is a THREAT to democracy, (which he is, whether Democrats believe their own rhetoric or not), then attempting to kill Trump is a DEFENSE of democracy. That is, of the tawdry simulacrum of democracy that exists in the U.S., which is a corporate oligarchy and a bourgeois class dictatorship fronted by a two-party political cartel which monopolizes political power. "Democracy" in the U.S. means every two but especially four years the two imperialist factions that are the Democratic and Republican Parties fight over power, and the power establishment's propaganda system has the job of working to generate artificial excitement in the "race," which they literally cover as if it is a sporting event, and tries to herd people into voting booths, since legitimizing the power system necessitates the appearance that it is "the people" who choose the unchanging and unchangeable (short of revolution) power system.
But as bad as that is, it is preferable to the fascistic dictatorship Trump has made clear he plans to institute. And with a large and organized group of long-time fascists such as the Heritage Foundation as his cadres, he has thousands of goons salivating at the prospect of taking over the government and remaking it to their liking. And this is not new. These people have been around for decades. (I closely followed the so-called "New Right," their chosen label, extremist goons of the 1970s and later, whose slogan was "We're Ready to Rule.")
As for Biden himself, the Boss of the Democratic Party, he immediately made an ass of himself, as he so often has done throughout his "career," announcing that political violence is "unheard of" in the U.S. That's rather like claiming the earth is flat, and doesn't revolve around the sun. Even NPR major domo Mara Liasson contradicted him on air the morning after the shooting (Sunday morning), pointing out the murders of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. Predictably, she omitted to mention that all were CIA assassinations with FBI aiding and abetting, and crucially, media as enablers to this day. And the co-conspiring city police departments, Dallas, TX, Los Angeles, California, and Memphis, Tennessee. And let me add the numerous political assassinations by the CIA, FBI, and various police departments, plus freelance fascists murdering progressive protesters and getting away with it. Texas governor Greg Abbott just pardoned a fascist terrorist who committed premeditated murder of a "leftwing" protester (he posted messages in advance with his intent), erasing the murderer's conviction.
By the way, the FBI, which handled the cover-ups in the state murders of the Kennedys and King, as well as in all other state crimes, is handing the "investigation" of this one too. Which simply means, an untrustworthy organization is doing yet another political investigation. So a word of advice: take the result with more than a mere pinch of salt. Use the entire salt shaker.
The United States has for years been in a situation analogous to the Weimar Republic of Germany (1919-1933), where an ostensibly democratic government protected fascist murderers by not prosecuting them or giving them wristslap punishments while harshly repressing their communist foes. This was a key factor in the growth of the Nazi Party, which wasn't even impeded by Hitlers 1923 coup attempt. Someone attempted to overthrow the government, and he got a very light sentence, comfortable conditions of confinement, and was allowed in prison to write his deadly manifesto, Mein Kampf.
And just as Hitler could play the martyr after his failed coup attempt, now Trump is playing the martyr-card. Which he was already doing with his criminal cases and one conviction (on 34 felonies for fradulent business records in a New York State trial, the ONLY trial that has actually occurred so far, thanks to Republican judges obstructing prosecutions in his Federal cases for stealing boxes of classified documents and the January 1, 2001 coup attempt, judges including 6 of the 9 Supreme Court "Justices" and Federal District Court judge Aileen Cannon, who has stymied the prosecution in the classified documents case at every turn and now even refuses to set a trial date).
So the brave, strong martyr Trump has defied death, defied the "haters" (most of the haters in the U.S. support Trump), and is unbowed and determined. How are the Democrats going to beat this?
They probably aren't. They insisted on putting up a senile man four years ago, and they're doing it again.
HEROIC LEADER AND SAVIOR OF THE NATION SURVIVES INCOMPETENT ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT!
(And he wasn't even shot. No bullet entered or passed through his body. His ear was lightly grazed, creating an extremely minor flow of blood- just enough for Trump to strike a pose.)