Bastards

Like you, I am feeling a mix of anger, sadness, and shock at what happened to Donald Trump last night. And the Left's reaction to the assassination attempt will only exacerbate those emotions.

I am in London for a long weekend—had the privilege of attending the men’s semi-finals on Friday—and was hoping to take a few days off but obviously the events of yesterday demand some attention.

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump is shocking but unfortunately not surprising. Some, including Tucker Carlson, warned this would happen. All of us at some point privately have worried that after an unsuccessful decade-long effort to destroy Trump, someone would resort to the only option left—killing him in cold blood in broad daylight.

And that almost happened at around 6:15 on Saturday night. A bullet grazed the former president’s ear leaving him bloodied on the right side of his face. A spectator was killed along with the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania according to the FBI. Two others were seriously wounded.

A defiant Trump emerged from a scrum of Secret Service agents, who quickly descended on the former president to protect him from additional fire, and pumped his fist in the air while saying, “Fight. Fight.” After a stop at a local hospital, according to reports, Trump returned to his home in Bedminster, New Jersey.

The GOP convention begins Monday in Milwaukee.

Congressional Republicans promise a full investigation into the U.S. Secret Service; some spectators told reporters they had alerted law enforcement about the presence of a sniper “bear-crawling” on a rooftop roughly 150 yards away from the stage. The FBI immediately took over the investigation into the shooter, a move that doesn’t inspire confidence among Trump supporters who have little to no faith in the politicized agency.

As law enforcement points fingers and scrambles to get answers, Trump supporters and rational-minded Americans in the middle are reeling from the reality of the near-assassination of a former president and GOP presidential candidate, a man beloved by millions of Americans. Many of us couldn’t sleep last night.

And no matter how conciliatory Democrats including Biden and Barack Obama appear to sound right now, their tone won’t last. Further, it will not be shared by the ignorant, brainwashed, bloodthirsty, vengeful voters of the Democratic Party.

Yes, the news media is primarily to blame for continuing to fuel this increasingly dangerous political climate. So too, of course, is Biden himself and everyone who works for him, particularly Attorney General Merrick Garland and his handpicked special prosecutor, Jack Smith. (Ironically, Smith is demanding a partial gag order on Trump in the Florida documents case, asking Judge Aileen Cannon to prohibit Trump from making critical statements about law enforcement involved in the case. “Trump’s repeated mischaracterization of these facts in widely distributed messages as an attempt to kill him, his family, and Secret Service agents has endangered law enforcement officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case and threatened the integrity of these proceedings,” Smith wrote in May. The motion is still pending.)

But if anyone is expecting an olive branch from Biden voters, forget it. Some already are perpetuating a conspiracy theory that the attack was “staged” by Trump. Others are denouncing the faux expressions of sympathy by Democratic Party leaders; social media posts lament the fact the shooter missed.

This post garnered 415,000 likes—and the responses to it underscore what we are dealing with on the other side of the political aisle:

And I realize this is purely anecdotal but overhearing a few Americans here in London this morning supports the idea that Democratic voters will remain as vicious and unbowed as ever. Two shriveled-up harpies from the East Coast loudly mocked the assassination attempt, questioning how anyone could feel bad for Trump and lamenting what a bad person he is. Another couple somberly discussed how “decent” it was for Joe Biden to contact Trump and worried how the optics of Trump raising his fist in front of the American flag would help him politically.

So if anyone is hoping that this assassination attempt will represent an inflection point, as Democrats love to say, and create the circumstances to bridge the widening chasm between the voters of both parties, I write to disabuse you of that hope. The media won’t change; Biden quickly will resort back to form.

If anything, the tone will worsen between now and November, potentially reaching a full-blown crisis if Trump wins the election.

I will have more thoughts, just like everyone, on this and reporting about the role of the Secret Service in both this event, the raid of Mar-a-Lago, and January 6. But for now, I think it’s best to keep sending prayers to the Trump family, the loved ones of the man killed and the two rally-goers wounded, and prepare for the worst in the months ahead.