Zorn: Political violence is always bad

But it did not just become bad

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Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

Hypocrisy, God and the attempt on Donald’s Trump’s life

When I was a kid, political assassinations and attempted assassinations felt like a normal part of life. President John Kennedy was gunned down in 1963. His brother Robert Kennedy was killed in 1968, a little more than two months after an assassin murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and three years after Malcolm X, also a prominent civil rights leader, died in a hail of 21 bullets fired at him in a New York City ballroom.

In 1972, presidential hopeful George Wallace was severely wounded by four gunshots fired at him at close range; in 1975, President Gerald Ford survived two close-range assassination attempts. And then President Ronald Reagan was wounded by a would-be assassin in 1981.

I expected plenty more bullets would fly at politicians in the years that followed. But after more than 43 years had passed after that attempt on Reagan’s life, I’d hoped that political violence against major figures was behind us.

Saturday dashed those hopes.

I deplore it and renounce political violence. It will not bridge our ideological divides, heal our wounds or solve any problems. That should go without saying. But since it might be conspicuous not to underscore that point, I’ll add my voice to nearly everyone across the political spectrum who is distancing themselves from Saturday’s attack.

Some, however, are coming awfully late to the idea that we must settle our differences peacefully. I will not listen to their prim, come-lately lectures on civility and decorum

‘Get over it’

“We have to get over it,” said Trump in a speech in Sioux Center, Iowa on Jan. 5, 2024, one day after a 17-year-old student opened fire at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, three hours away, killing a sixth-grader and the school principal, and wounding six others before taking his own life.

Trump’s attitude toward political violence has long been similarly insouciant.

• When a protester was being led out of one of his campaign rallies in 2016, Trump said “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you that. … You know what they used to do to a guy like that in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”

• Also at a 2016 rally, Trump said “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato (at me), knock the crap out of ‘em, would you? Seriously .Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”

• At another 2016 rally, Trump said of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, "if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

• In 2018, Trump praised U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Montana, for attacking a journalist, saying “Anybody that can do a body-slam, that's my kind of guy.”

• In 2020, Trump referred gleefully to MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi being wounded while covering a protest, saying "He got hit in the knee with a canister of tear gas (it was actually a rubber bullet), and he went down. He was down. 'My knee. My knee.' Nobody cared. These guys didn't care. They moved him aside. And they just walked right through. It was the most beautiful thing,"

• In 2020 he cheered on Twitter when his MAGA morons tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road.

• On January 6, 2021 Trump reportedly “spoke approvingly” to his aides about the chants of those invading the Capitol to “hang Mike Pence.” And he has since referred to the rioters imprisoned for attacking police officers as “hostages.”

• In a 2023 speech, he made light of the brutal attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by one of his crazed supporters by saying “We’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco — how’s her husband doing, anybody know?”

• Earlier this year, Trump he posted this image of himself holding a baseball bat near a photo of the head of New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg:

And, of course, Trump is good buddies with the world’s most violent dictators.

So let’s not blame Democrats’ apocalyptic campaign rhetoric for the acts of a plainly disturbed young man. Trump revels in the language of violence.

‘It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.’

I’d like to think that all people of faith recoiled from the above assertion offered by Trump on his Truth Social platform.

It was echoed by many, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (“God protected President Trump”) House Speaker Mike Johnson (“GOD protected President Trump yesterday”) Rep. Mike Collins , R-Ga. (“God spared Donald Trump for a reason”) and many others, including Eric Trump, who credited “divine intervention” with sparing his father from anything more than a flesh wound on the ear.

What? God failed to protect the victims at the Highland Park July 4th parade, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, at the El Paso Walmart, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, at Parkland High School, at the Route 91 Harvest music festibal in Las Vegas and at so many other venues of mass slaughter? God is averting his eyes at the slaughter of thousands of innocent victims of the conflict in Israel and Gaza?

God allowed a bullet to kill firefighter Corey Comperatore at Saturday’s rally as he tried to protect his family from the sniper’s attack, but spared the life of the commandment-breaking odious reprobate Donald Trump?

That is some weird, sick theology right there.

In related news…

I thought Donald Trump would choose a running mate to appeal to some constituencies that he doesn't do all that well with. Women and minorities for instance. But his choice, reconstructed former Trump hater J.D. Vance, a senator from Ohio, doesn’t seem likely to reassure voters who are still hesitant about Trump.

From Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump. After last week’s assassination attempt on Trump, he attempted to whitewash his radicalism by blaming the shooting on Democrats’ rhetoric about democracy without an iota of evidence.

This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a second Trump presidency. In a podcast interview, Vance said that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the courts attempt to stop this, Vance says, Trump should simply ignore the law.

If anything, he may be so dreadfully Trumpy that he repels persuadable, swing voters. Let’s hope.

Trump’s run of luck continues

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Trump Monday on the grounds that Jack Smith’s appointment as special prosecutor violated the Constitution. She’s a Trump appointee whose rulings have been very favorable to Trump in the case so far. And I would hold out hope that the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn the decision — which threatens the tradition of independent special prosecutors — but the Supreme Court appears to be packed with Trump loyalists as well.

Maybe this will fuel dispirited Democrats to rise up, vote and demand that justice be done? Let’s hope so.

Shame on MSNBC for cancelling Monday morning’s episode of ‘Morning Joe’

There was very little if any new information Monday morning, yet MSNBC cancelled “Morning Joe,” its flagship news/talk program, to feature a tedious, repetitive “breaking news” block. I listen to the show’s podcast most days because I find the cast — starring former Republican former congressman Joe Scarborough — sharp, insightful and less dogmatic than some of the other hosts of the left-leaning network.

Rival CNN reported:

A person familiar with the matter told CNN that the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole. …

It’s not the first time MSNBC has made such programming decisions in charged political moments. Last year after Hamas executed its deadly October 7 attack on Israel, MSNBC quietly pulled three of its Muslim broadcasters from air.

Infamous and cowardly are two words that come quickly to mind.

Similarly, I don’t understand why Democrats decided to hold back in their campaign against Trump, pulling commercials and cancelling rallies in the aftermath of the attempted assassination. He was barely hurt, and his team is fundraising off the incident, per Politico:

The former president’s joint fundraising committee sent an email and text message Sunday afternoon. They linked to a WinRed page that shows a stylized image of Trump raising his fist after he was shot, along with the words: “I am Donald J. Trump and I will NEVER SURRENDER.”

“Unity. Peace. Make America Great Again,” the page reads before asking for a donation.

The political battle must remain symmetrical.

Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses.

Nearly all the letters and comments last week were related to the question of whether President Joe Biden should step aside and allow a younger candidate to take his place. Events have at least temporarily put that debate on the back burner. If you wish to read views on that, consult the comment threads from last Tuesday and last Thursday.

Donald Nemerov — I see that you have announced to the world that you will always vote for the Democratic candidate no matter what. Really? What would it take for you to change your mind? Am curious.

Zorn — Really. For the most part, the Democratic party represents my social and economic views. The last Republican I was tempted to vote for was Judy Baar Topinka when she ran for Illinois governor against Rod Blagojevich in 2006. Topinka was a fiscally moderate, socially liberal Republican and Blago was plainly a slimy weasel.

I went for Blago because Topinka was running with DuPage County State’s Attorney Joe Birkett, a conservative with whom I had many issues not worth going into here. In trying to shore up right-wing support, Topinka lost me. In hindsight I regret that vote, even though, as far as column material went, Blagojevich turned out to fucking golden.

If the Democrats put forth an ethically bankrupt, wildly mendacious, ignorant narcissistic grifter to run against an indoor Republican — moderate, smart, honest, principled — I’d likely get over my few differences with that candidate and vote for them. But I see people like that being drummed out of the Republican Party now. Adam Kinzinger comes to mind.

Joseph Darguzas — Wisconsin is an open-carry state when it comes to firearms, so why do the Second Amendment loving Republicans not allow any guns within a security zone around their convention in Milwaukee? Shouldn’t law abiding citizens in, say, the Englewood neighborhood be able to have security zones around their homes?

Zorn — Yes. There seems to be widespread agreement that guns don’t belong in schools, courthouses, sporting venues, airplanes, libraries, bars, zoos, casinos museums and so on. But they do belong on the streets.

Phil Seeberg — News reports say the 20-year-old who shot Donald Trump was a a registered Republican, but I’d not read too much into that. He’s in a highly Republican area, so he may not have had a real choice if he wanted to cast meaningful votes in primary elections. I grew up in former House Speaker Michael Madigan’s ward in Chicago, and when I turned 18 my parents told me I could vote however I wanted in November, but I needed to take a Democratic ballot for the primary.

Zorn — I dislike that voters need to declare their party affiliations at primary time. It violates the concept of the secret ballot. It would not be difficult to allow voters to select their party ballot in the privacy of the booth, though it would make it harder for candidates to target their likely voters.

Also, the shooter reportedly donated a small amount to a Democratic Party cause, so he may not be particularly ideological. I think it’s a mistake to pin the blame for this on political extremism.

Will Roseanne Barr sue for copyright infringement?

Monday night’s palate cleanser after a day of wild weather and consequential news. Andress’ take on “The Star Spangled Banner” was excruciating, but Roseanne Barr still has the crown:

Ya gotta see these tweets!

Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:

Vote for your favorite. I’ll share the winner in Thursday’s main edition.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media. And I will continue to call the platform Twitter if only to spite Elon Musk:

On this issue and perhaps this issue alone, I am with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett:

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!

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