Donald Trump and his team are pushing a so-called pivot toward unity in the wake of Saturday’s assassination attempt on the former president, and the media is absolutely eating it up—with positively no actual evidence to suggest that anything has changed.
While Trump’s allies were quick to blame Democrats and the media for Saturday’s shooting, the former president’s team has opted to go a different route, and switch up the script on his speech at the Republican National Convention. Trump is now touting the address, scheduled for Thursday, as a chance to “bring the country together.”
As a result of Saturday’s chaotic events, and early reports out of the Trump camp, many outlets are optimistically reporting a likely shift in rhetoric from the Republican candidate who has been using the same deeply divisive, violent, racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric for the past eight years.
“Trump will adopt an unfamiliar, almost benevolent posture, and call for unity in the face of tragedy,” Politico reported Monday, citing Trump’s “near-death experience,” which “would rattle and forever change even the strongest among us.”
Maggie Haberman of The New York Times said during a CNN interview Sunday that Trump seemed “completely normal” after the attempt on his life, but noted that she thought the former president might choose to recognize this as a “different kind of moment.”
Haberman pointed out t hat Trump hasn’t yet started selling merchandise featuring the photograph of him with blood on his face and his fist in the air , which could be a sign of a tonal shift .
But immediately after, Haberman warned against making such predictions. “Anybody who is trying to predict, number one, what the rest of this campaign looks like, or how he is going to talk about it, or how Democrats are going to talk about him, I think it is a mistake. There’s a lot we don’t know,” she said.*
Tucker Carlson certainly thinks Trump’s turn toward the light is real. “Getting shot in the face changes a man,” the erstwhile Fox News host told Axios .
In the same piece, Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen speculated about Trump’s next moves.
“He could unify America,” they wrote. “Imagine he gave a speech featuring something he rarely shows: humility. Imagine him telling the nation that he has been too rough, too loose, too combative with his language—and now realizes words can have consequences, and promises to tone it down and bring new voices into the White House if he wins.”
Similarly, Elliot Ackerman penned a piece for The Atlantic arguing that “Trump could take a different path” than the one he’s been set on for almost a decade. “Trump has called his enemies ‘bad people’ in the past, but now he’s suffered a near-death experience,” Ackerman wrote. “Sometimes that changes people.”
This kind of speculation is pure fiction, however, as Trump’s assassination attempt has only emboldened his preexisting victim complex, which has convinced him he’s the target of systemic political persecution, and not criminal prosecution. By Monday morning, when it was announced that Judge Aileen Cannon had tossed Trump’s classified documents case, the former president was back posting his same old martyred talking points on Truth Social.
“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia ‘Perfect’ Phone Call charges,” Trump wrote .
“The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME.”
He did include one limp appeal toward unity: “Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System and Make America Great Again!”
It took about 36 hours for Trump to abandon his call to unite a divided America and get back to talking about himself. As the Republican National Convention begins, it’s worth remaining skeptical of Trump and his team’s attempts to paint him as a changed man. Trump was desperate to widen his appeal to centrist voters long before this weekend, and he will continue to use Saturday’s violent unfoldings to distract voters from his own equally violent rhetoric.
* This story has been updated to include Maggie Haberman’s full quote.
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