The political impact of the Trump assassination attempt 

The conventional wisdom is that the race for the presidency fundamentally changed with the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. That’s wrong. The failed attempt to kill Donald Trump didn’t change trends in this election; it reinforced them.  

The shooting reinforced public images about four distinct issues. 

1. Trump’s strength and determination; 
2. Biden’s weakness, politically, physically and cognitively; 
3. Trump’s lead in the battleground states he needs to win reelection; and 
4. The failure of basic governmental institutions, such as the Secret Service, to do their job 

The enduring image of the Saturday shooting is the photo of the former president as he leaves the stage. His ear was bloodied but his fist was raised, his face beleaguered but defiant, all with the American flag waving in the background. 

That image will define the rest of the 2024 campaign… and well beyond it. It is indelible. And it is impossible for the opposing party to rebut, or even counter. In a single photograph, it captures Trump’s strength and his determination to fight on. That imagine is now burned into the public consciousness. Republican advertisements and T-shirts will keep it there. 

Biden’s image, by contrast, is captured by the cover of the Economist magazine, showing an empty walker for infirm adults bearing the presidential symbol. That’s devastating, not because it is novel but because it isn’t. Images like that resonate most strongly when the capture what the public already believes. 

That’s true in this case. Though the image is obviously exaggerated, it captures what the public saw with its own eyes when President Obama led Biden off the stage in Los Angeles, when Jill Biden helped the president down a few steps after his horrible debate with Trump, when a gaggle of White House aides need to surround the president for a short walk to the helicopter and, most of all, when Biden bumbled through his debate with Donald Trump. 

These damning images have hardened into a concealed view of President Biden as someone who is too old and infirm to lead the country much longer. Indeed, more and more voters think he is too infirm to lead it now. 

When images like that congeal, they are almost impossible to reverse. Reading from a teleprompter won’t overturn them. Alternating shouts and whispers to the press won’t overturn them. Neither will ending impromptu remarks by trailing off into space and concluding with “anyway.” 

The public gets it. They’ve had friends and relatives facing similar medical problems; not identical, perhaps, but troubling, irreversible, long-term declines. They know, from hard experience, that these problems only get worse. There are better days and worse ones, but the trend is clear, and the public knows it. 

That recognition shows up in polling. About three-quarters of all voters, and more than half of all Democrats, now think Biden is too old for the job. They are increasingly angry with the press for covering up the president’s condition or failing in their duty to investigate it. The press itself seems angry at the White House for lying to them. That true enough, but the legacy media should look in the mirror. 

The public’s mistrust of both the Biden White House and the media has political consequences. Right now, the press simply wants to force Biden out and replace him with another Democrat. If they succeed, they will line up behind the new candidate, presumably Vice President Kamala Harris, who is unpopular but hard to replace without losing the African-American vote upon which Democrats depend. The media will support her, of course. Get ready for a new cover of Vogue. 

But the media’s support, whoever the new Democratic candidate is, will be less effective now for two reasons. First, they’ve already been caught lying. Second, their audience is shrinking, thanks to internet technologies that have fragmented the media landscape. Most voters now rely on sources, including social media, which reinforce existing political views. Walter Cronkite is dead and buried.  

What about the Democrats’ claim that Trump is “practically as old as Biden” and sometimes forgets words? True and true, but Trump is not suffering the same, obvious decline as Biden. Whatever weight the Democrats’ argument had evaporated when Trump raised his fist and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” immediately after the assassination attempt. Voters think Joe Biden could never manage that. He would wait hours and need a teleprompter. They’ve seen his typical confusion simply leaving the stage after prepared remarks. 

Speaking of prepared remarks, it took the White House’s crack communications team over 100 minutes after the assassination attempt to write an anodyne statement.  A seventh-grade English class could have done it in five minutes. A remedial class. And that was before President Biden stumbled out to reassure the nation with a weak, scripted response, which failed to acknowledge the shooting was an assassination attempt. 

The cumulative effect of the searing event in Butler, Pennsylvania, will be amplified at the Republican National Convention this week. The effect will be straightforward. It will reinforce Trump’s lead in the critical battleground states and deepen the Democrats’ dilemma about what to do with a sitting president they don’t think can win but who has the convention delegates to secure the nomination and seems determined to stay in the race. 

The Secret Service’s abject failure adds to the White House’s problem. Their failure to secure the perimeter of the Pennsylvania event should lead to the immediate suspension of the agent in charge of that operation, the firing of the head of the service and a congressional inquiry into rumors that the Department of Homeland Security declined President Trump’s request for more security. If the rumors are true, those responsible and their bosses should be fired.  

These failures have a political meaning, and it’s not a good one for Democrats in this election cycle. First, the failures lay at the feet of the administration, damaging any lingering reputation for competence. Second, they represent yet another failure of the administrative state to perform its core duties effectively. DHS hasn’t protected the border (though that is largely because of Biden’s decisions). The CDC didn’t protect the public during Covid and didn’t give the public accurate information. They tried to suppress any public comments that disagreed with the official view and pushed social media companies to shut off dissenting voices. The CIA’s former leaders told the public that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the earmarks” of a Russian disinformation operation, which gave Joe Biden cover to declare, openly and falsely, that it definitely was Russian disinformation. All Joe had to do was ask his son. The list of bureaucratic failures goes on and on and on. 

These failures hurt Democrats because, for better or worse, they are the party of the permanent bureaucracy. They created it from FDR to LBJ to Obama, and they take credit for its successes. Now, they are tagged with its failures. When those failures are obvious and dangerous, as they are with the Secret Service’s failure to secure the “line of sight” from a rooftop to Trump’s podium, they damage the “party of the administrative state and federal bureaucracy.” 

Returning to the main point, the leading candidate for president was almost killed Saturday because the Secret Service failed catastrophically in its duty. The proximity to disaster should send a shudder through all Americans, regardless of party.  

For Democratic politicians, that shudder will continue for months. They’ve read the polls and, even before the assassination attempt, feared the loss of the presidency, the Senate and House. Saturday’s events deepened those fears. Democrats are walking into the abyss, and they know it. 

Anyway…