I was sitting in an empty horse-racing grandstand having a cigarette, about to order a steak at the Hollywood Casino in Washington, Pa., when I saw on my feed that a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump had been confirmed.
After saying a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, I walked back into the Bistecca steakhouse, took back my seat at the bar and told the bartender and two guys there, “Another assassination attempt against Trump.”
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“Are you surprised?” one guy, a retired Teamster asked, a line that triggered a memory. “It almost seems normal now,” the bartender added. Then I ordered a ribeye and a glass of Merlot and we went back to watching the Chiefs against the Bengals.
None of the networks cut away from the action for news coverage, my phone wasn’t blowing up with notifications, and my guess is that 90% of the people down on the floor of the casino, or in the sportsbook, had no idea anything had even happened.
We all know that if such an attempt had been made on Vice President Kamala Harris’ life, the games would not only have been cut away for the news, they’d likely have been suspended. But this is about more than media bias, it’s about social callousness.
Let’s take a step back and realize that this reaction to a former president and current candidate nearly being killed is absolutely bizarre, and was not the reaction just two months ago, the last time Trump was almost whacked by a loony leftist, if you are keeping track.
That day, I was at a restaurant in Toledo interviewing some voters when news of the first attempt broke. People stopped in their tracks and assembled by the TVs at the bar to watch coverage. There was an electric air of shock and fear.
And yet, this was the moment I was reminded of in Pennsylvania as news of the second attempt broke. One of the guys back in July, when we were watching Trump wipe blood from his face, said the exact same words: “Are you surprised?”
To be fair, the horrible events in Butler were more dramatic. Corey Compatore tragically lost his life, and the imagery was heartstopping. But if the Palm Beach assassination attempt had happened on July 13, instead, then that Toledo restaurant would still have been stunned.
The normalization of this assassination attempt on Sunday was palpable, regardless of every politician and pundit on all sides for the most part furrowing their well-plucked brows and decrying political violence.
This desensitization of murder attempts against political opponents is a danger that cannot be overstated. It can only forebode a future in which not only do more attempts occur, but Americans’ basic respect for the lives of those they disagree with diminishes.
In the America of 25 years ago, when we did not hate each other quite so vociferously, the natural thing that would be occurring this week would be an event with Donald Trump, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden all teaming up to remind us of our core nonviolent values.
That is very unlikely to happen though, because today the only thing that matters is winning the election. Both sides treat the other as an existential threat, not as a partner in governance, but what is the point of winning if the country is so bitterly divided that it can barely function?
The younger of the two men at the steakhouse, a mustached friend of the Teamster, eventually weighed in. He had some sense of who I was, and where I am perceived to be on the political spectrum. “I’m more to the right,” he said.
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“So you think this coulda been…,” I interjected.
“Yeah,” he said. We both knew what I meant.
I wanted to tell him he was crazy, and to take off his tinfoil hat, but I couldn’t, not because I think anyone official had anything to do with either assassination attempt, but because we’re lied to regularly, from COVID, to Russian Collusion, to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
What, I’m supposed to tell him to trust what he reads?
Around midnight, I was smoking a cigarette outside of my hotel, by a side door I’d propped open with a rock. Darkness had blessed the almost mountainous landscape of Western Pennsylvania and staring up at the big round moon I thought about it all, the assassination attempt, the reaction, the business as usual attitude.
And all I could think was, “Are you surprised?”
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