After back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio in August 2019, President Trump took to a White House podium to denounce gun violence. His remarks called for an end to the “glorification of violence” and legislation that would apply the death penalty to shooters. Further, he stressed that “this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.” Trump claimed that if his administration could get this done, it would mean the victims would “not have died in vain.” Then Trump addressed the victims directly, saying, “May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo.”
The mass shooting was in Dayton, not Toledo. But even more offensive to the victims, Trump dropped any plans to push Congress to look at gun laws three months later—which means, according to the vow he made in his speech, those victims sadly died in vain.
Because of empty Republican promises and the National Rifle Association’s stranglehold on GOP members, mass shootings continue to occur at an average of more than one a day in the United States. (A mass shooting is mainly defined as three or more persons shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrator. At the Trump rally in Pennsylvania, one attendee died and two others were critically injured. Trump was injured but not critically.)
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This violence has become so common that when Trump’s assassination attempt popped up on my phone, my reaction was subdued. The news struck me as serious, but not shocking, or even that newsworthy. First, there was a video of Trump popping up and worrying about his shoes, so it was quickly known that the attempt had failed. Second, like so many Americans, I have been desensitized to these shootings after being exposed to the horrors that occurred in Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine, First Baptist Church, Tree of Life Synagogue, Marjory Stoneham Douglas, Pulse, Vegas—and those are just the mass shootings that I can reel off the top of my head in 10 seconds.
Basically, my reaction was to feel numb. As a longtime comedy writer, my brain often looks for the joke as a reaction to trauma. “I hope Melania has an alibi,” I said to my husband. But I showed restraint and didn’t post.
On Threads, one of the first comments on my feed was written by Craig Thomas, a TV showrunner and friend, who offered another possible explanation for my numbness.
“It’s not great,” Thomas wrote, “but PLEASE don’t give Trump more sympathy, generosity or pacifism than he has given anyone else…he hasn’t earned that.”
Later, David Rothkopf’s “Need to Know” newsletter expanded on the strangeness of Trump being a victim. “If we genuinely want to end the culture of political violence in America,” Rothkopf wrote, “we must begin by acknowledging that the target of Saturday’s attack in Pennsylvania is also one of the most dangerous advocates for such violence this country has ever seen.”
Together, Thomas and Rothkopf captured the difficulty of feeling sorry for someone who rarely expresses sympathy for others, but often promotes cruelty and retribution.
Continuing to scroll, I noticed that online reactions mainly fell into four categories:
- An outpouring of support and good wishes for the former president. These came from both sides of the aisle.
- Condemnation of political violence. Most people spoke specifically of the situation at hand. Gabby Giffords broadened the context: “Political violence is terrifying. I know. I’m holding former President Trump, and all those affected by today’s indefensible act of violence in my heart.” Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel Emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, broadened the topic even further.. “Let’s be clear,” Ifill wrote. “Political violence is targeting and threatening election workers & officials. Political violence is plotting to kidnap a Governor. Political violence is threatening, doxing, or swatting judges, jurors, court personnel and witnesses. Political violence is an attempt to murder the husband of the Speaker of the House. Political violence is attempting to assassinate a fmr President. All of it is unacceptable. Please do not talk about yesterday’s violence outside this context.”
- Conspiracy theories about the shooting being “staged” (according to the extreme left) or masterminded by the current President (according to the extreme right.).
- Jokes which, I believe, are an acceptable response. After Ronald Regan was shot in a harrowing 1981 assassination attempt, he was taken to hospital where he quipped to his surgeons: “I hope you’re all Republicans.” Still, given that people tragically died, jokers had to inch along a very thin tightrope. Some jokes were obvious, lazily name-checking Jodie Foster. Some were silly. (“Don’t get your ears pierced at Claire’s!”)
One joke in particular took my breath away: “Please don’t let it turn out to have been a time traveler from the future.”
If they awarded Pulitzer Prizes for single sentences, novelist Michael Chabon would win another for that one.
Trump, however, did make good on one vow from that 2019 speech in the White House. The Pennsylvania mass shooter was immediately executed by a government sniper, which means capital punishment was “delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.”
