Donald Trump Created the Violence and ‘He Alone Can Fix It’

GOP Convention Speech Could be for Healing or to Inflict More Harm

In the wilder years of my early 20’s, an exasperated boyfriend warned me that frequenting sexually charged nightclubs was bad for our relationship. I assured him that nothing untoward was happening. He retorted, “If you hang around a barbershop long enough, you’re going to get a haircut.” Within a couple weeks, I sported a new hairdo and the relationship hit the skids.

On Saturday night, at an ill-fated Pennsylvania rally, former President Donald Trump nearly got his haircut. From the moment he skulked down the golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, Trump brazenly trafficked in hate, lies and outright violence.

Since then, he has habitually and unrelentingly vandalized our values, disfigured democracy and poisoned our politics. The ex-president mainlined malice directly into the nation’s bloodstream. Working with tainted MAGA judges and corrupt Republicans in Congress, Trump also flooded our country with weapons of war—like the AR-15 that was used to nearly end his life.  

Our language is filled with cliches for such comeuppance: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” “It’s karma.” “What goes around comes around.” “Live by the sword, die by the sword” and “If you play with fire, you get burned.” Trump’s ear was grazed by the bullet, but will he finally hear the cacophony of discord he has single-handedly created in this country?  

It is imperative that we point out the obvious hypocrisy and the decisive role MAGA has played in facilitating resentment and rage, while still unambiguously rejecting the assassination attempt. Political violence is abhorrent, unacceptable and anathema to our democracy. I wholeheartedly agree with President Joe Biden who addressed the hideous incident:

“We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America. There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence, ever. Period. No exceptions…We debate and disagree…but in America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box.”

Sadly, Trump’s fiery rhetoric has often led to bullies, bullets and bombs. He has gleefully fomented violence and tried to take away our access to the ballot box, making it increasingly difficult to solve our differences peacefully. The most robust example is January 6, when fascist hordes stormed the United States Capitol building, in his name, to undemocratically seize power.

Had the would-be lynch mob hanged Vice President Mike Pence or murdered members of Congress, the blood-thirsty president might have succeeded with his treasonous coup. Trump’s plot came dangerously close to stealing our right to vote, shredding our Constitution, eliminating civil rights protections and suppressing free speech, which likely would have caused violent street clashes or outright civil war.  

In The Atlantic, David Frum explained Trump’s unmistakable role in throwing lit matches on our political tinderbox?

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

Trump has compared his political opponents to vermin, called democrats Marxists and communists, echoed Hitler by claiming immigrants poisoned our nation’s blood, and vowed to strike back at his opponents if he’s reelected, warning, “I am your retribution.”

Despite Trump’s dark history as a provocateur and uniquely divisive public figure, key Republicans are disingenuously trying to gaslight Americans. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. wrote that “Democrats and liberals in the media have called Trump a fascist. They’ve compared him to Hitler.”

That’s true, but only because the shoe fits. A key line in a Netflix documentary, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, referred to the former German leader, but it just as easily could have applied to Trump: “[Hitler] creates civil war-like strife that allows him to claim that he is the only man who acts in the name of order, at the same time he is feeding the flames.”

If MAGA doesn’t want to be called fascist, it should immediately eliminate Project 2025.  This totalitarian document, which seeks to control every aspect of American’s lives, was discussed on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. Bannon asked Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts about Project 2025, which he helped craft, and Roberts’ answer was hair-raising: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Contrary to their insincere protestations on Twitter, does this sound like a movement that has problems using violence to achieve its political ends?

It’s important to point out that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was a registered Republican, although he once gave a small donation to a progressive organization. A former classmate described his political worldview today in the Philadelphia Enquirer:

“He definitely was conservative. It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate…The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side. That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”

How does America escape from this political death spiral?

The onus is on Donald Trump to lower the heat and shed some light at this week’s Republican National Convention, not the other way around. He can begin by begging forgiveness for what he put our nation through on January 6. Not only has Trump never apologized for his deadly insurrection, but his legal larcenists are working tirelessly to steal the 2024 election. The New York Times reported this week on the Trump campaign’s ongoing, attempted theft:

The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.

But unlike the chaotic and improvised challenge four years ago, the new drive includes a systematic search for any vulnerability in the nation’s patchwork election system.

If this weren’t scary enough, the judicial coup continued today, with MAGA judge Aileen Cannon dismissing the classified documents case against Trump, ruling that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had violated the Constitution. Cannon is a shameless partisan hack who has made a series of bizarre legal maneuvers benefitting Trump, and conveniently offered her most notable gift on the day the Republican National Convention opened in Milwaukee.

Cannon is in the mold of corrupt Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who along with their traitorous wives, are working overtime to wreck democracy. Earlier this month, the High Court gave Trump immunity from committing crimes while in office, a grotesque ruling that will arguably make Trump an emperor if he wins reelection.

These zealots also struck down a federal ban on bump stocks which are devices that allow gun owners to turn their firearms into machine guns. Trump should thank God that his would-be assassin wasn’t using a bump stock with his AR-15, or we’d be talking about Trump in the past tense.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party have ceaselessly attacked our institutions, delegitimized our elections, perverted the judiciary and destabilized our country. Trump roared into office painting a dreary picture of “American carnage.” With the help of his apparatchiks, the sick, twisted world he imagined has nearly come to fruition.

In their bubbles of arrogance and hubris, MAGA ideologues thought they’d be insulated from the volatile, inverted universe they created. But now they know there is no escaping the wreckage they have wrought, and there is no magical immunity their captured Supreme Court can grant them to offer protection from their hideous handiwork.

Donald Trump created this monstrosity and to paraphrase his 2015 nomination speech, only “he alone can fix it.” The former president/insurrectionist can finally become a leader by using his bully pulpit at the GOP convention in Milwaukee to slow-walk America back from the brink. He could also squander this unique civic opportunity to violently shove America off the precipice.

Tragically, I think we all know what comes next. Trump’s Vice Presidential pick of bombastic Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) doesn’t inspire confidence a new leaf will be turned. It seems that this old rabid dog is unlikely to learn any new tricks.