Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. president Donald Trump pumps his fist as he is helped into a vehicle after an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13.Gene J. Puskar/The Associated Press
History is decided by seconds and inches. If the driver carting around Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914, hadn’t made a wrong turn, we might have avoided the First World War. If Soviet naval officer Vasili Arkhipov had yielded to the wishes of two fellow senior officers to launch a nuclear torpedo during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world might have seen nuclear war. And if former president Donald Trump hadn’t tilted his head the exact moment a gunman sent a bullet his way during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, the country might have erupted in a way the U.S. hasn’t seen in more than a century.
Thankfully the bullet only appeared to have grazed Mr. Trump’s ear, averting death and ferocious social upheaval. Tackled, bloodied and surrounded by Secret Service personnel, and surely with a sense that something had gone terribly wrong, Mr. Trump had to get out of there as soon as possible. But as he was being escorted off the stage, he stopped.
“Wait, wait,” Mr. Trump can be heard saying on the still-live mic. He broke free of his protective human barrier, raised his fist in the air, and with blood on his face he yelled: “Fight, fight, fight.”
That moment yielded a once-in-a-lifetime image that will forever be used to telegraph the Trump legend. The former and would-be president didn’t know if and where he had been hit, if there were more shooters, or if the danger had been neutralized. Yet somehow, he had the wherewithal to recognize that this was a moment – his moment – to showcase everything he wants the Trump brand to stand for: strength, resilience, bravery, defiance. Luck spared his life, but a split-second decision made him look like an idol.
One can loathe Mr. Trump’s personal and political instincts and believe that a second Trump presidential term poses an existential threat to American democracy, while recognizing that he is very, very good at what he does. He has an uncanny ability to distill his opponents to their weakest perceived core element: “Sleepy Joe” Biden, “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, Nikki “Birdbrain” Haley. His detractors see this as petty and obnoxious, which it is. But it’s also effective. It gives Mr. Trump’s supporters a single word to justify their animus toward his many detractors, and they also come with a ring of truth. “Low Energy” Jeb Bush was low energy. “Little Marco” Rubio does seem like the classroom dweeb.
Mr. Trump turned a federal indictment into a rallying cry; he raised more than $3.9-million on the day he was arraigned on charges related to hush-money payments to a former porn star, charges for which he was later convicted. He has turned his legal woes into accusations against his many adversaries, labelling his indictments as a “witch hunt” and promising he will “never surrender.”
The former president lies with impunity, of course, which is perhaps why he’s so effective at what he does. Indeed, while other politicians obfuscate, redirect, or dance around an answer, which conveys an air of untrustworthiness, Mr. Trump just outright lies, which creates an impression of authenticity – if you don’t actually listen to what he says.
But Mr. Trump is not pure id. He was remarkably restrained during the recent presidential debate with Mr. Biden, and only made one quip about the President’s obvious struggle to articulate coherent thoughts. (“I don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don’t think he knows either.”) Mr. Biden’s performance was so unnervingly poor that exploiting it too much would’ve come off as cruel. Mr. Trump appeared to understand the moment, and held back.
Indeed, much of Mr. Trump’s success as a politician lies in the fact that he knows how to meet a moment, whether social, cultural or, yes, even during an attempted assassination. He can tap into Americans’ economic anger, channel their anxieties about crime and illegal immigration, and then reflect it back to them in a way that makes him their champion. He can create a movement out of a phrase: “Make America Great Again” is an entire worldview, distilled into four words. The photo after the shooting does the same. As he told the New York Post, “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen. They’re right and I didn’t die. Usually you have to die to have an iconic picture.”
Mr. Trump is the paragon of a showman, the quintessential performer. That’s why he is such a political force, a threat, and why he appears poised to seize the presidency once again. And he’ll do it – literally and metaphorically – bloodied and with his fist in the air.