OPINION:
“It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye,” President Biden reportedly said at a meeting with fellow Democrats on July 8.
“It’s simple,” Vice President Kamala Harris posted on July 3. “Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”
On July 11, the last night of the NATO summit, Mr. Biden told the world that defeating the former president in November “is not just a political issue, it’s a national security issue.”
What is a young, impressionable American to think when told by the leader of the free world that to “save democracy,” we must “stop Trump”? Mr. Biden has repeatedly invoked variations of his 2022 quote “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
The day before a gunman tried to assassinate Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden “strove to turn the nation’s attention back to former president Donald J. Trump,” according to The New York Times, and raged that his political rival is a “convicted criminal,” “business fraud” and rapist.
Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Biden got his wish. All eyes are now on Mr. Trump, where they are likely to remain until he is once again president.
Meanwhile, the lower White House pressroom is likely working double time this morning to erase the “angry Joe” images and fiery quotes from last week. They’ll try to turn the president back into everyone’s affable grandpa, not the cranky octogenarian who has repeatedly threatened to “beat the hell out of [Mr. Trump].”
Yet Mr. Biden’s extreme political invective is not easily erased. Nor is it unique to the tottering 46th president. As portrayed by the left, Mr. Trump and his MAGA movement aren’t just fellow Americans who hold political beliefs such as shrinking the size of the federal government, strengthening America’s military and reducing bureaucracy.
To many on the left, we are nearly subhuman. It slips out in how they describe us. Those who want to “make America great again” are a “basket of deplorables” and “cult members” in need of “formal deprogramming.” In that light, why not use like-minded media friends to push every Democratic talking point? Why not use social media companies to suppress the truth? Why not employ the IRS to slow-roll Republicans or the FBI and CIA to spy on Trump’s campaign? Why not strip Mr. Trump of his security detail, as Democrats proposed in April?
The U.S. government is the left’s high religion, the ultimate source of justice and mercy. The man who threatens to drive a stake through the heart of their secular god, therefore, is public enemy No. 1. Leftists will stop at nothing to stop him and everyone who supports the “make America great again” movement. Many saw last weekend’s bullet coming.
“That bullet was meant for all of us,” a friend and senior GOP staffer on Capitol Hill texted me after the failed assassination attempt.
Several friends have also remarked that the assassination attempts on Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump bear striking similarities. Both survived. Both showed themselves to be lionhearted and tough (“Getting shot hurts,” Reagan quipped to his wife, Nancy, on March 30, 1981). The key difference, however, is the political environment in which the gunmen acted. John Hinckley Jr. allegedly shot Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster — not because President Jimmy Carter said that the Reagan revolution would destroy the country.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot Mr. Trump before the Secret Service killed him, came of age in a different America. It is not usual to hear Democrats cast Mr. Trump as a fascist leader of “an insurrection” who would “become a dictator on day one.” After years of the legacy media portraying Trump as a Hitler, how many young people today envision a chance to become a modern-day Major Axel von dem Bussche?
Perhaps the events of July 13 will tone down the rhetoric. Some of the angriest have softened their language already. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wished Mr. Trump a “speedy recovery.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted that she was “glad the president is safe.” Let’s hope we hear more of that in the coming months — for America is an exceptional place, destined for a special place in history.
The United States came just a few millimeters from an assassination, which could very well have torn the republic asunder. Who but the most fervent atheist can deny the divine hand at work in Pennsylvania?
• Morgan Murphy is a former Pentagon press secretary and national security adviser to Sen. Tommy Tuberville.
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