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TPM: Yes. Trump Started The Fire. And Everyone Knows It.
Yes. Trump Started The Fire. And Everyone Knows It.
The Backchannel - Josh Marshall
September 16, 2024 2:37 p.m.
When a young man took a shot at Donald Trump in July it was the first time political assassination, attempted or otherwise, had intruded into presidential politics in more than 40 years. Now it appears to have happened a second time in two months. What’s going on here? It comes almost a week after Donald Trump and JD Vance began a campaign of racist anti-immigrant incitement focused on Springfield, Ohio, an effort so destructive and reckless that the Republican mayor and at least two of the three Republican County supervisors have either begged Trump to stop or publicly questioned whether they will even vote for him because they’re so upset about it. The city has been rocked over the last week by repeated bomb threats, school evacuations, the shuttering of one local college which has moved to remote study. This isn’t even counting the experience of Haitian migrants who are being terrorized by the pro-Trump extremists Trump and Vance have incited against them.
And yet, it’s Trump who seems to have been targeted by an almost belief-defying two assassination attempts in little more than two months. We’ve already discussed the case of Thomas Crooks, the shooter in the first attempt in July, who was himself killed by a Secret Service sharpshooter moments after opening fire. Crooks had a negligible political footprint — registered as a Republican, apparently making a single small dollar donation to a Democrat-aligned get-out-the-vote group a few years earlier. The clearest through-line in Crooks’ life story is that he was into guns. Very into guns. The best theory of his crime — the one apparently adopted by FBI investigators — is that he was planning a “typical” mass shooting incident and then decided to make the Trump rally his venue when he found out Trump was coming to town. Whatever the specifics, it seems clear that Crooks’ motivation was that of a “typical” mass shooter, an angry and isolated young man’s desire to make his mark in a final, apocalyptic explosion of violence. Tying it to Donald Trump and presumably killing Donald Trump as part of it was simply a way to up the ante as opposed to achieve any specific political or ideological goal.
Now we have Ryan Routh, who current reporting suggests is what you might call a swing extremist. He apparently voted for Trump in 2016, then voted for Biden in 2020 and had been supporting Vivek Ramawamy in 2024. The biggest through-line in Routh’s story is one of mental instability and a tendency toward violence. In 2002 he was arrested after barricading himself in a building with a weapon in a stand off with police.
Republicans are now predictably demanding that Democrats in essence stop campaigning against Trump because they’re inciting their supporters to try to assassinate Trump. That’s absurd. Neither of these men is in any sense a supporter of Democrats or even of more marginal groups that could in any sense be identified with “the left.” But two men have seemingly tried to kill Trump in two months. In the first, that was clearly the intent. In the second, it seems highly likely to be the case, though it’s possible further investigation could complicate the picture. So what is happening? I think there are two levels on which to answer this.
/snip
The Backchannel - Josh Marshall
September 16, 2024 2:37 p.m.
When a young man took a shot at Donald Trump in July it was the first time political assassination, attempted or otherwise, had intruded into presidential politics in more than 40 years. Now it appears to have happened a second time in two months. What’s going on here? It comes almost a week after Donald Trump and JD Vance began a campaign of racist anti-immigrant incitement focused on Springfield, Ohio, an effort so destructive and reckless that the Republican mayor and at least two of the three Republican County supervisors have either begged Trump to stop or publicly questioned whether they will even vote for him because they’re so upset about it. The city has been rocked over the last week by repeated bomb threats, school evacuations, the shuttering of one local college which has moved to remote study. This isn’t even counting the experience of Haitian migrants who are being terrorized by the pro-Trump extremists Trump and Vance have incited against them.
And yet, it’s Trump who seems to have been targeted by an almost belief-defying two assassination attempts in little more than two months. We’ve already discussed the case of Thomas Crooks, the shooter in the first attempt in July, who was himself killed by a Secret Service sharpshooter moments after opening fire. Crooks had a negligible political footprint — registered as a Republican, apparently making a single small dollar donation to a Democrat-aligned get-out-the-vote group a few years earlier. The clearest through-line in Crooks’ life story is that he was into guns. Very into guns. The best theory of his crime — the one apparently adopted by FBI investigators — is that he was planning a “typical” mass shooting incident and then decided to make the Trump rally his venue when he found out Trump was coming to town. Whatever the specifics, it seems clear that Crooks’ motivation was that of a “typical” mass shooter, an angry and isolated young man’s desire to make his mark in a final, apocalyptic explosion of violence. Tying it to Donald Trump and presumably killing Donald Trump as part of it was simply a way to up the ante as opposed to achieve any specific political or ideological goal.
Now we have Ryan Routh, who current reporting suggests is what you might call a swing extremist. He apparently voted for Trump in 2016, then voted for Biden in 2020 and had been supporting Vivek Ramawamy in 2024. The biggest through-line in Routh’s story is one of mental instability and a tendency toward violence. In 2002 he was arrested after barricading himself in a building with a weapon in a stand off with police.
Republicans are now predictably demanding that Democrats in essence stop campaigning against Trump because they’re inciting their supporters to try to assassinate Trump. That’s absurd. Neither of these men is in any sense a supporter of Democrats or even of more marginal groups that could in any sense be identified with “the left.” But two men have seemingly tried to kill Trump in two months. In the first, that was clearly the intent. In the second, it seems highly likely to be the case, though it’s possible further investigation could complicate the picture. So what is happening? I think there are two levels on which to answer this.
/snip
We didn't start this fire...
2 replies
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