Another Would-Be Assassin

Another person tried to kill Trump at a dinner in Washington, it probably won't be the last attempt on the Donald.

Donald Trump broke tradition and showed up to a dinner with the press, and was almost greeted with a bullet. The casual violence in American society is abhorrent, as is the pandemic-era wave of political violence. No matter what you think of the man himself, it is an unqualified good that the gunman was stopped. Still, it is disheartening to see that would-be killers are still going after Trump, and worse still that I’m not surprised.

That Trump has been subject to assassination attempts is in my view not very surprising, he is a unique figure in American politics, and I think the left considers him a singular force. No other figure on the right has the capital C charisma – in the Weberian sense of the term – as Trump, and if he were no longer in charge the ideological incoherencies and misaligned interests between the wings of his coalition would work as a powerful centrifugal force. JD Vance could definitely take over, but he would no more fill Donald Trump’s shoes than Marco Rubio does.

I wrote last year about how the Trump court works, and why I think the current administration in Washington is a court. You can read the piece here, but the long and short of it is that Trump and his associates wield power largely through interpersonal relations rather than bureaucratic praxis. Morbid as it may be, that means that the potential change in the direction and possibly even ideology a successful assassin could accomplish is greater than in past administrations.

This combination is a volatile mix in and of itself, even before we add the kerosene that is the world-wide fame and infamy one would gain as the man who killed the golden president. Again, it is morbid to consider, but the facts are that Donald J Trump makes a uniquely enticing target for radicals, lone wolves, and the type of loser who drifts towards political violence. No one will ever be more famous and consequential than Gavrilo Princip, but if the worst happens there is a new entrant on the top three most famous assassins in history list.

What worries me most about the latest attack is the way the media has reported on it. It is of course objectively true that the secret service massively cocked it up to let a gunman so close to the president of the USA, but reporting about how the secret service is bad at their job probably makes future attacks more likely. Two months after Trump had his close encounter with a 5.56x45mm round another would-be assassin was hiding in a bush trying to shoot Trump at a Florida golf course. One attacker probably inspires other, and the widespread reporting that the secret service has dropped the ball makes any plan a sicko comes up with less unrealistic and potentially increases the risk that they put it into motion.

We should all be glad that this latest attempt, and the previous ones have failed. But that is not reassuring, and unfortunately we should not be surprised to see further attempts. Let’s just hope that the secret service can learn from its mistakes.

If you liked this post you can read a previous post about finance here or the rest of my writings here. I also have a section for longer reads I call essays here, I particularly recommend my series called The Bird & The Technoking exploring Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and its political and cultural implications. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!

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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.

Written by Karl Johansson

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Cover photo by Alex Andrews from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson