The Quiet Majority

Donald Trump was almost assassinated. Why aren't we talking about it more?

On Saturday, July 13, 2024, a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man fired eight rounds from an AR-15 style rifle at former President Donald Trump. Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican with no identifiable motive for the assassination attempt, killed one spectator and injured two others before being taken out by Secret Service snipers.

Like many of you, I turned to social media for updates. Twitter was flooded with an endless roll of video clips of Trump ducking behind the podium. “Gunfire apparently.” As the alarming news circulated amongst our groupchats, the next wave of material poured in: practically AI-perfect photographs of Trump rising above his bodyguards, blood streaked across his face and with his fist in the air. You could almost hear his call, “FIGHT!” leap off the still image. The American flag flies behind him like a superhero cape. Since the journalists were crouching down, their wide-angle lenses pointed up at Trump, the presidential candidate towered even more fearlessly and valiantly. Like peering up at a monument.

The responses were fascinating. It was like injecting Monster Energy directly into Trumpers’ veins. Many of them, especially the closeted ones who felt emboldened enough to finally out themselves, were galvanized by the photograph. The Sticker Mule guy used his brand accounts and texts to evangelize Trumpism to his customer base. Not that he hid any of this, but Elon Musk proclaimed his support for 45.

Democrats, meanwhile, acknowledged that Trump handled himself well and that his bravery and invincibility might have pushed him past the election finish line. After a disappointing Biden debate performance, Trump’s court victories, and frustration with their party’s duplicity, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “Trump’s definitely gonna win now,” many worried. The resounding sigh.

I started observing something even more intriguing, however. It happened within my immediate physical world amongst family and friends I was with. It was then mirrored online. People just… kinda stopped talking about it. Or, never talked about it at all.

Donald Trump, one of the most captivating and sensational Presidents in American history, was within inches of being murdered by a deranged shooter. “What a day,” some of my texts read. There were over 10 Million searches for “Donald Trump” on Saturday. 24 hours later, Americans were talking about soccer and the celebrity deaths of Richard Simmons and 90210 star Shannen Doherty. “Donald Trump” didn’t even make it the Top 20 listed search results. But “Home run derby” did.

When I brought this up, some friends replied, “Well, he didn’t die. If he’d been killed, there’d be Civil War in the streets right now.”

The last time there was a Presidential assassination attempt of this magnitude, Ronald Reagan was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement in 1981. John Hinckley struck the 40th President with a revolver bullet in the hopes of capturing the attention of actress Jodie Foster. Reagan was hospitalized but also survived. Yet, the nation grounded to a halt. Churches held prayer services, the Academy Awards were postponed, and the NCAA tournament held a moment of silence. Even television shows had to rework some of their character storylines.

I was barely a year old when Reagan was shot, but I still have vivid historical recollections of the incident to this day. But, it’s only Tuesday morning and our social media timelines have moved on. Even the mainstream media front pages are giving up real estate to Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, Ingrid Andress’s appalling National Anthem performance, and Amazon Prime Day.

I don’t know if this is an indictment on how short our attention spans are, but even Hawk Tuah’s stuck around longer than this. There was just an ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON DONALD TRUMP and we are already talking about saving 32% on Apple AirPods (click HERE!).

The only explanation I can muster is that we’re tired of — or numb to — the political headlines and unenthused about a noisy election season. Many of us forgot how clamorous Trump’s 4 years were as President, in both traditional and social media. Back then, every morning’s news wrap-up was ignited by something Trump tweeted, which would send the Left into a spiral and the Right into a rally.

Biden aka Sleepy Joe is incredibly boring and out of sight, out of mind. There is no fist-pumping photo op for Biden as he can barely make it up the stairs. And maybe this is the type of candidate Americans secretly want. One that doesn’t interrupt our dinner conversations or steal our weekend. We just want to watch the soccer finals in peace.

In his recent New York Times interview, American political scientist Robert Putnam declared, “Most people in America don’t care about politics.” When pressed by the interviewer about this (“Even now?”), Putnam continues:

Even now. If you ask people, what are the things that you were worried about in your daily life? Politics is bottom of the list. Most people don’t wake up in the morning thinking, 'Oh, I wish I could stick it to those abortionists or whatever. Most people, they wake up thinking about their marriage or their kids or the local sports team or whatever. Then they turn on the news and the news is telling them that A) they should be concerned about public affairs, politics; and, B) people telling them what to think. The polarization that we’re talking about is mainly provoked from above, to some extent by media, but mostly by political leaders.

In October of 2020, professor Yanna Krupnikov wrote, “most Americans — upwards of 80 percent to 85 percent — follow politics casually or not at all. Just 15 percent to 20 percent follow it closely (the people we call “deeply involved”).” At the end of Biden’s first term, Krupnikov appeared on Ezra Klein’s podcast to reiterate this point. “The biggest divide in our politics isn’t between Democrats and Republicans, or even left and right. It’s between people who follow politics closely, and those who pay almost no attention to it.”

And while it’s often opined that to be apolitical is a privilege, it’s actually the “Americans with higher incomes [that] tend to participate more actively in politics” since they have the time and resources to volunteer, sit around, and actively engage in these types of discussions (they are also typically older and highly educated).

The rest of Americans are tired.

65% of us feel exhausted when talking about politics. with only a handful of us who believe the government is actually working efficiently. Although many of us will turn out to vote, three in ten of us don’t believe in either political party. Many of us are simply… over it.

Joe Biden is a zombie. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans are the walking dead, politically speaking. Financially stressed, impossibly busy, distracted by TikTok or preoccupied with managing multiple jobs or doing drop-offs and pick-ups. There is very little left in us to give politics the attention it may deserve. We are growingly distrustful of the government and the media, so politics is becoming a harder sell, even at the low price of tribalism and blame. But if it comes with loud fireworks and disruption and turmoil, we just may have to scroll on by…