During the Boer War, Winston Churchill encountered danger as a wartime correspondent. He wrote this for the Daily Telegraph in 1898.
“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
For a young ambitious man, such an experience was exhilarating. Yet this week, Americans were not exhilarated when an assassin’s bullet nearly killed Donald J. Trump. They were horrified. And unlike Churchill’s characterization, the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania will have a major result.
When Trump was struck in his right ear by the bullet and fell to the ground, the Secret Service rushed to cover him. He wasn’t in a cowering mood. He was in a defiant one. And in short order, rally-goers would see him standing, fist raised, blood streaming across his face, and mouthing “fight, fight, fight!” In that moment, he and his campaign were dramatically changed.
To be sure there is much ahead of his reelection. As is said of politics, a week can be a lifetime. But this week was unlike any other in recent presidential history. Looking back over time, few political leaders have been so demonized as Donald Trump. Many who oppose Trump truly abhor him. It’s personal for them. Policy has little to do with their disposition toward Trump. His original sin was that he beat the left’s preferred female candidate for President, Hillary Clinton.
When Trump defeated her in 2016, those who despised him took to the streets in protest. They literally howled to the sky like wounded animals. They protested his inauguration. Indeed, members of Congress were calling for his impeachment before he took the oath of office. This was not an ordinary kind of hatred. It was the sort of animus that doesn’t require facts. Only emotion and resentment were needed for Democrats and their allies ensconced in Washington’s bureaucracy to develop false narratives and theories they would use to proffer impeachments.
Those efforts failed because they were based on lies designed to soothe the wounded feelings of those who hate Trump. And when he left office after the 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, Democrats took smug comfort in their efforts. Trump was gone. It was a bright day for America. But in reality, it wasn’t bright at all. It has been a nightmare.
The characters and actions of that frightening dream are many. Open borders that permit dastardly criminals to mix unnoticed and uninterrupted among others illegally entering the United States. An inflation rate that is far worse today than it was four years ago. A foreign policy that is in disarray, causing doubt among our allies and delight among our adversaries. The rise of despicably antisemitic voices from people who seethe in their hatred of America and its founding. A land where reverse racism has been cynically promoted to compensate for long past racist wrongs. These things and others have done more to revitalize the presidential ambitions of Donald Trump than could be imagined. Biden’s utter failure has been Trump’s faithful ally in making the case for the latter’s reelection.
And when Trump announced his reelection effort, the Biden Department of Justice—rather injustice—and other rogue prosecutors brought a host of charges against him before biased judges and stacked juries. In time all of this will fail too, just as the impeachments deflated. But use of the courts to pursue political enemies causes no discomfort for Democrats if Trump is the object of them. Lady Justice is blind no more. She now peeks and smirks at an accused person, especially if it’s Trump.
But on 13 July 2024, everything changed. It was no longer the issues or the false prosecutions that enlivened Trump’s campaign. No longer was it the recrimination. It is now the man. A man who has been reviled by his distractors to the point of being compared to Hitler. This past Saturday evening, a man struck by a bullet—that would also kill and wound nearby spectators—stood up, blood smeared, and signified a defiance that is now the tapestry of the Trump reelection campaign. One iconic picture is worth all the words that can be assembled to describe a fighter. It symbolizes the hopes and dreams of those of us who seek to renew the American dream.
When Donald Trump was hastened from the stage and rushed to the hospital—his fist reaching skyward amid the squad of Secret Service agents surrounding him—he sent a message to Americans amounting to this:
I’m not done. Nor will I be done in. I’m fighting for you and, yes, me also. I will not be intimidated. I will win because we must win. And we shall.
On 13 July 2024, Donald J. Trump was reelected the 47th President of the United States.
SCOTT LINGAMFELTER, a retired Army colonel, served in the Virginia General Assembly from 2002 to 2018. He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, July 4, 2023).