Trump Shot, Media Deranged
In the aftermath of an assassination attempt on the presumptive Republican nominee, America's media use disingenuous language to demonstrate their lack of sympathy
This is a quick, unscheduled missive dashed off in the small window I have between watching the Wimbledon men’s final (well done, Alcaraz) and the Euro 2024 final between England and Spain, which will end in tears either way, let’s face it.
All accounts and available video show an assassination attempt on Donald Trump yesterday at a rally in Pennsylvania. He was clipped in the ear by a bullet, and is “fine” and recovering.
The would-be assassin, killed on the scene, has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks1, and the BBC have published his photo, shared below.
The BBC also have reported that “explosive devices” were found in Crooks’ vehicle at the scene, and “explosive material” was found at his home.
Here’s a guy the BBC filmed at the rally explaining that he saw the shooter climbing along the roof and tried to warn the police about it for a few minutes before the shooting.
There are people seriously proposing that this was staged, that Trump may even have injured himself, that there were no real bullets fired but rather BBs or pellets. The Washington Post already put out an article summing up the conspiracies swirling around, “filling the information vacuum as consumers choose their own reality.”
Despite occasional forays into opinion, 1984 Today isn’t a political or partisan project. What interests us here is dystopian trends or events, often with a parallel to George Orwell’s famous novel or dystopian fiction more broadly.
In this case, it is (some of) the media’s response to the attempt on Trump’s life that made me want to bash this out.
The exact hyper-partisan dishonesty, bloodlust, and hyperbole in the media that probably contributed to someone hating Trump enough to want to kill him was immediately on display as the news broke.
CNN running with “Trump injured in shooting at Pennsylvania rally”, as if to imply that some deranged MAGA gun-nut showed up and started popping off, was, believe it or not, the least egregious.
Indiana’s Capital Chronicle went with the same mendacious approach, which is at least factual if intentionally obfuscatory.
Note the lack of any mention in the headline or sub that there was an assassin on a rooftop with a rifle who was shot at the scene and identified. Based on a quick skim, you’d be excused for thinking “Those right-wing crazies really got a taste of their own gun-mad medicine, didn’t they?”
Unsurprisingly, MSNBC ran with the most shockingly disingenuous version of something approximating a description of what happened: “Trump rushed offstage at Pennsylvania rally by Secret Service after loud popping noises heard”.
That wild ride of an attempt to make Trump sound like a coward reacting to a few burst balloons was changed after the fact on their news page but I managed to get a screenshot of the video page they put up, which at least as of now remains an exhibit of how deep the partisan rot has entered American journalism.
That said, the BBC didn’t amend their original caption of the video of the shooting: “Donald Trump ducks as loud bangs heard during rally”. Auntie did at least follow up by calling it an “assassination attempt”, which is both factually accurate and directly descriptive.
Here are a couple of images from the coverage of Trump that could be construed as being on the inflammatory side.
No wonder someone thought killing him was justifiable, heroic even.
Isn’t it a common thought experiment in ethics to ask whether going back in time to kill Hitler as a baby would be justified or not? 42% of respondents to the New York Times said yes.
Remember Stephen King’s novel The Dead Zone, in which a troubled young man has visions of the future and is convinced that a presidential candidate will start a nuclear war if he isn’t stopped?
They made a film of it in 1983, starring Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen. Here’s the assassination attempt scene:
Eerily prescient of exactly this moment in America much?
The same toxic media stew that set Trump up as a dictator-in-waiting, a dangerous lunatic, a threat to democracy, a Hitler, a Mussolini, a fascist, a racist, minimised or skirted describing the fact that someone tried to kill him as an assassination attempt.
This is not the way to rebuild trust, win over hearts and minds, or, simply put, do the job of describing reality to people who weren’t there.
This piece from The Huffington Post from 2016, by James Marshall Crotty, called Comparing Trump to Hitler Is Worst Kind of Hate Speech, is right on the money.
The final paragraphs bear quoting:
Just because candidates from Marco Rubio to Ted Cruz to Ben Carson to Bernie Sanders to, yes, Donald J. Trump, indulge in that favorite American trope - the over-the-top end-of-days jeremiad - does not place them remotely in the same category as the deranged Austrian monster who brought us systematic rape, torture, ghastly human experimentation, the death camps of Auschwitz, Ebensee and Treblinka, as well as a game plan for these incomparable atrocities in his recently republished anti-semitic screed Mein Kampf.
So, rant all you want against Trump, cops, homophobic and environmentally ignorant candidates (my pet peeves) or anything else that displeases you, but please, for the sake of responsible rhetoric which breeds peace and goodwill among those of differing opinion, think long and hard before making odious comparisons.
Hear hear. Yet why do I feel like laying a bet on this horrible act of violence restoring a modicum of sanity and balance to political reporting would be long odds?
That’s all, folks. I’m off to watch the final. Have a good (rest of your) Sunday.
Come on, England!
Note the three names, as is tradition. See also James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman etc. No word on whether he was found in possession of a copy of The Catcher In The Rye.