The amazing thing about the Trump shooting is that America was surprised at all

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is shown covered by U.S. Secret Service agents after an incident during a rally on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Thomas Matthew Crooks took his father’s AR-15, climbed a building near former President Donald Trump’s Saturday rally and got several shots off in Trump’s direction before being killed by the U.S. Secret Service . The gun was purchased legally in Pennsylvania by Crooks’ father. Early background reports indicate that the 20-year-old gunman was a loner, a registered Republican, but had also donated to at least one left leaning organization.

There’s no evidence of any political component to anything he did.

Now that I have covered the basics of what occurred, I have one primary question today. What part of those details, if one had precisely predicted them a week, month or year earlier, would have sounded impossible or unlikely at all? Would any of us have struggled to envision such a thing?

I wouldn’t have. Not for one moment.

I first heard the news while fading in and out of an early evening nap on Saturday. A text from a friend at 6:26 pm said “Trump got shot!” I quickly sat up and turned on the news to see it was real. Even though some weirdos on social media committed to doubting its validity for far too long, it was clearly real.

None of it surprised me. I did not feel a single second of astonishment for the first hour I was glued to the screen.

Yes, violent crime is declining in America. However, with the suffocating presence of guns here, particularly the absurdly common AR-15, coupled with a largely unresearched mental health phenomena of these suicide shooters, these horrific episodes have become embedded into our daily lives.

When was the last time a shooting like this really surprised any of us?

Similar to other shootings

The more details we learned, the more the shooter and the shooting began to sound remarkably similar to any number of school shootings. Of course, school shooting season doesn’t begin until next month.

“The Guns of August” in 2024 means something different than when the 1962 Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name was published. That book was about the first days of World War I, an account that so impressed President John F. Kennedy, he used it as guidance during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was assassinated the following year.

If only there was a book a leader could use today to guide us through this current American scourge. Excuse the sarcasm, there are plenty available.

Countless Trump supporters immediately began baselessly blaming political opponents for the assassination attempt. By Sunday, the depth of that nonsense was clear, yet most persisted with the narrative.

Not a hint of it had anything to do with Democrats or President Joe Biden, but trolls like U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, a potential vice presidential nominee, and Rep. Jim Banks, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Indiana, didn’t veer an inch. It’s as if they wanted their original lie to be true more than they wanted peace and calm. Yes, of course they did.

From where did this manic instinct to benefit from disasters like this come? These men weren’t fraught with worry, emotionally jarred, or even concerned for the public. Instead, they used their platforms to shamelessly attempt to gain political favor. Even after it was clear they were wrong, these liars stuck to their made up tale of political victimization. Banks even referred to Trump as a “bull moose,” in a cartoonish narrative of devotion toward his cult leader.

Again, these are not your average crackpots. Both have prominent roles on the main stage of the Republican convention this week.

Rhetoric and more

While the preposterous banter continued on Sunday, the former president played golf in New Jersey.

Save the “both sides” chatter. Sorry, GOP, this just isn’t that. The guns are yours. The hateful rhetoric is yours. The examples of celebrating political violence? Also, yours. Trump himself joked about both the assault on Paul Pelosi and the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

I did eventually become surprised by the performance of the U.S. Secret Service. How did this little twerp get to the top of that building in the first place? How did they let him get just under 150 yards from the podium? How did he manage to get off multiple shots, killing one and injuring several others before they gunned him down? It’s an unsettling security failure, plain and simple.

But mostly, I am surprised that an assassination attempt on either candidate took this long. And that others are surprised by it.

On Saturday night, I knew the world had changed, but was certain no one had any idea how. Not yet.

It was a sad day in America, but not because of the shock of it. Its inevitability is the saddest thing of all.

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