As Donald Trump heads back to the scene of his near assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, the right ear that was either grazed by a bullet or bloodied by shrapnel has completely healed.
And, even though numerous studies say that as many as 90 percent of gun violence victims subsequently suffer from PTSD, Trump has insisted that he is not suffering any psychological after effects from coming literally within an inch of violent death.
“I have had no impact,” he told DailyMail.com on September 3. “It’s just amazing.”
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Trump added that he had not experienced bad dreams or flashbacks such as others with PTSD experience. He appears to have sought both emotional equilibrium and political advantage in declaring that he was saved by The Almighty.
And he has not missed an opportunity to seek a monetary benefit by modifying his God Bless The USA Bible. The website that sells it offers a new version at the same $59.99 one whose cover has been “custom embossed in remembrance of the day that God intervened during President Donald J. Trump’s assassination attempt.” It reads:
DONALD J. TRUMP
45TH PRESIDENT
OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE DAY GOD INTERVENED
JULY 13, 2024
But, as noted by the American Journal of Psychiatry, PTSD symptoms can take up to three months to surface, and less commonly, even longer. A delay may result from continued danger causing a person to maintain such defenses as denial and numbing. That could conceivably include Trump’s continued exposure to the risk of another assassination attempt every time he appears in public.
Trump may have been unknowingly maintaining that in the days afterward when he repeatedly replayed the 7-second video of himself being shot. His return to Butler may trigger not just memories of being shot, but also psychological mechanisms for coping with having been shot.
Others who have experienced gun violence believe Trump must have been transformed by it in ways he may not yet—or ever—fully realize.
“Being that close to losing your life, it changes you mentally,” Aswad Thomas, national director Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, told the Daily Beast after the shooting.
Thomas is himself a victim, having survived being shot multiple times in 2009 by two would-be robbers, one of whom had lost an eye in a shooting. Thomas suffered what he has come to learn are typical after-effects of near-death by bullet.
“Sleepless nights where you relive that moment over and over again… nightmares…stages of depression…hypervigilance,” he said.
Former president Donald Trump moments after being shot at during his rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
Brendan McDermid/ReutersFor Trump in particular, Thomas imagines, “being on the debate stage or being at a rally—it is going to constantly be going through his mind.”
Thomas, who had been about to start a career in professional basketball before that dream was violently cut short, added that reliving the trauma is “the experience so many people go through, what I experienced every single day as well.”
Shonda Lifhred of Charlotte, North Carolina, works with Thomas advocating for gun violence victims. She survived being shot seven times in a domestic violence incident in her home as her young children watched. She said victims first have to get over the shock that has actually happened to them.
“Then the trauma, then the dreams, the nightmares, the sweats,” she said in the days after Trump was shot. “It kind of plays games with your mind.”
She went on: “This may change him forever, having a near-death experience like that.”
Lifhred is a Democrat who supports “The Donald” and imagined that Trump was already burdened mentally.
“He has a lot on him running again for president, and what just happened? Someone tried to assassinate him!” she said. “Oh yeah, he’s messed up. He’s definitely gonna need trauma therapy.”
She added, “He may not do it at first, because he would not think that he needed it. I went about maybe eight or nine years before I realized, ‘Oh, wait a minute…’”
Lifhred said she only then understood that she had PTSD and, even though she had managed to just keep going, she needed help.
“You’re living it every day, but you have to work through it, and you have to do the work, you have to do the therapy,” she said.
The Daily Beast asked Lifhred what she would say to Trump if she ever happened to run into him.
“I would tell President Trump to do the work. Get trauma counseling. Go through the therapy,” she replied.
She added, “I know he’s older. Sometimes older people don’t like change. But yeah, do the work.”
