After Trump Shooting, America Reverts to Blaming the Other Side

Even before the most basic details of the shooting at Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally yesterday had emerged, the ceaseless, grating background noise of American political life had cranked itself up once again.

Over here, a couple of United States senators — Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley — were sharing an early CNN headline that said SECRET SERVICE RUSHES TRUMP OFFSTAGE AFTER HE FALLS AT RALLY. “They just can’t help themselves,” Rubio posted on X .

Over there, the conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Erick Erickson were blaming Trump’s political critics. “On a daily basis, MSNBC tells its audience that Trump is a threat to democracy, an authoritarian in waiting, and a would-be dictator if no one stops him,” Erickson wrote . “What did they think would happen?”

You might imagine that a possible assassination of a leading presidential candidate would be a scared-straight moment for a nation that has been sleepwalking into a culture of political contempt, delegitimization and tribalism. But before anything, it was right back to reflexive criticism of the media, vitriol for the other side and conspiracy theories.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” wrote Sen. J.D. Vance , (R-Ohio), who is on Trump’s vice presidential shortlist. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.” Elon Musk used the moment to endorse Trump’s candidacy.

“You bastards,” tweeted Chip Roy, pushing an image of a New Republic cover that combined Trump and Adolf Hitler.

“The Republican District Attorney in Butler County, PA, should immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination,” wrote GOP Rep. Mike Collins . (“Haven’t you heard, congressman, he’s immune,” responded @nycsouthpaw .)

Unsurprisingly given the circumstances, nearly all of the rage and blame was coming from the 45th president’s fans. But all the same, the former Republican official turned fulsome Trump critic Bruce Bartlett was one of many online who invoked the Reichstag Fire . “I bet he’s planning the American equivalent of the Reichstag fire to justify violence against the left,” Bartlett had posted last week. After the shooting, he added: “Looks like we just had our Reichstag fire.”

The terms trending on X included: “Civil War,” “Where’s Biden?,” “Fake News,” and “The Left” — terms of division and blame.

Further out into the wilds, and presumably on the left side of the political spectrum, the term “BB gun” was trending. “THIS IS THE MOST STAGED SHIT I’VE EVER SEEN,” posted an X user called @jawn . “AN ACTIVE SHOOTER AND SECRET SERVICE JUST ALLOWS HIM TO STAND BACK UP FOR A FUCKING FIST UP?!” (The post has been viewed 10 million times.)

Most of Trump’s critics, of course, responded with horror or grace, sending hopes and prayers. But at a moment of social media fury, the gestures unsurprisingly didn’t calm the waters. Liz Cheney’s prayers were met with a flurry of responses along the lines of “traitor” and “you caused this.”

And here we are.

We don’t yet know what the shooter’s motivations were. But even by just looking at the reactions to his act, what’s striking to me is the weirdly familiar 21st century American combination of shock and non-shock that permeates all of them.

The shock: Someone was apparently able to take multiple shots at a former president of the United States, protected by a phalanx of Secret Service and surrounded by a throng of citizens.

You might wonder: How could this happen?

The non-shock: Yet another person in the United States was apparently willing to engage in potentially lethal violence in the arena of politics, the latest in a sorry trail that has menaced elected officials, judges, civilians, the Capitol and now a leading presidential candidate.

You could just as easily wonder: How did it take so long for this to happen?

In the hours and days ahead, there will no doubt be still more vows of retribution and assessments of responsibility both for the incident itself and for the broader climate of the country. After all, our political actors on all sides of every issue know just what to do. Like trained Secret Service agents responding to gunshots, the muscle memory of outrage and grievance and flame-fanning kick in.

Same for a lot of civilians: Within minutes, at least some people in the traumatized crowd were directing middle fingers at the media.

But a better reaction, I think, would be a feeling of deep sadness for the country.

In the span of a generation, this democracy of ours has become a place where the language of political violence is commonplace, and acts of it are not far behind. The list of victims and near-victims is familiar: Steve Scalise. Gabby Giffords. Paul Pelosi. Brett Kavanaugh. Gretchen Whitmer. So is the list of plots: The pipe bombs sent to CNN. The gunman at Comet Ping Pong. January 6.

Your personal politics probably determine which of these you take most seriously — and which ones you write off as the product of mentally troubled kooks who don’t reflect anything broader about our politics.

And yet a look at the stats paints a clear picture of a kind of tinpot-republic-ing of the United States.

It’s not clear how a society pulls itself out of this dynamic. One instinct seems to imply that the immediate result must be to stop criticism of Trump’s own troubling history with regard to the legitimacy of elections. But just as surely there will be an opposite instinct: To suggest that the outrage of Trump’s supporters — Josh Hawley has called for hearings — is illegitimate because, after all, they weren’t so troubled after January 6.

Which is all just to say that the first hours after the gun went off don’t suggest that people in positions of responsibility have any sort of road map to anything other than the next all-too-familiar shock.