It was Sunday morning on Fox News Channel, so it was time for a sermon. It was delivered by Rachel Campos-Duffy, one of several anchors on the early show discussing the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on Saturday evening in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“He is under a special protection,” she said, “because of the millions of people who have been praying for him and praying to Jesus, praying to the angels, praying to the Holy Spirit, to put a shield around him.”
Later in the hour, reporter Lawrence Jones — on the scene in Butler for Fox — interviewed an eyewitness and concluded with his own blessing.
“If it wasn’t for the lord, Jesus Christ, our lord and savior,” he said, “we’d probably be talking about an obituary for the former President of the United States.”
These bulletins probably came as a surprise to American Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and members of other religions who choose to worship other versions of God.
But this was Fox, Trump’s right-wing propaganda channel that pushes white, Christian nationalism along with Second Amendment gun “rights” while spinning most political stories for maximum anger and fear.
Together, Trump, Fox, and other right-wing media outlets have raised the degree of anxiety and hatred in the United States to levels not felt since 1968, with its bloody political murders and rioting that led to the presidential election of the Republican Richard M. Nixon.
Trump has vowed vengeance against “vermin” he dislikes as well as those opposing his attempt to steal the 2020 election from President Joe Biden. And he has promised a “bloodbath” if he should lose this November’s election to Biden.
He consistently portrays his own nation as a hellscape of crime and treason. Trump’s swaggering braggadocio and foul mouth have brought us to the point where an assault rifle at a pep rally seemed deadly predictable. So what can we do now?
“Both sides need to tone down the rhetoric,” we were told all day Sunday on the somber talk shows by frowning experts. That is a bunch of bunk, classic both-sidesism. One side — Trump — is verbally courting violence. It is simple-minded and disingenuous to blame his targets for the current level of bile.
No liberal, Democrat, or progressive — for instance — launched a lynch mob to the Capitol to assassinate Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021. But that’s exactly what Trump did.
No liberal, Democrat, or progressive has portrayed themselves as hostile to our European allies in NATO and talked like a demagogue friendly with foreign dictators who are the enemies of the United States. But that is exactly what Trump does and continues to do.
No doubt, Trump will use this event to further portray himself as a victim and a martyr even as he campaigns as a convicted felon in New York state who was found guilty on 34 counts. In addition, he faces further federal and local charges in Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C.
As Secret Service agents tried to cover him and remove him from the stage on Saturday, Trump kept moving his hands and head to thrust his bloody fist to his mob and to shout “Fight! Fight!” as the blood trickled down from his right ear to his cheek.
This impulsive reaction further exposed Trump to more harm had there been more shots. Expect him to use these photos to further his pose as a savior to his followers. He often says he stands between them and evil forces that will turn the United States into a “banana republic” and a “third-world nation.”
In case you don’t get his drift, that’s shorthand for “immigrants of color.” It was ironic to see Trump with blood on his face, since the vital fluid of life and death is one of his favorite metaphors. In Clinton Township last year, he warned of the “blood-sucking globalist attack on U.S. auto workers.”
He said immigration is “destroying the blood of our country.” And he ripped “the corrupt, political class that has spent decades sucking the life, wealth, and blood out of this country.” Of course, there is his “bloodbath” promise which Trump pretends was a mere metaphor for auto jobs. OK, sure.
Trump probably won’t mention that his blood-streaming wound came from a legal assault rifle fired by a registered Republican. Before Secret Service snipers shot him dead, the would-be assassin fired several rounds from the top of a nearby building, killing one man and critically wounding two others.
This again proved that semi-automatic rifles are efficient for gun massacres, with or without bump stocks. But don’t look for Trump to call for gun-safety legislation. Along with abortion abolitionists, the gun groomers are among his most faithful followers. Life and death. Ironic, huh?
The violence ended another rancid week in this political campaign, part of it with a Michigan angle. A few days before, first-term Rep. Hillary Scholten from West Michigan became the first Democratic House member to urge Biden to resign due to doubts about his mental acuity at age 81.
She was among the missing when Biden visited Detroit for a feisty speech at Renaissance High School on Friday night.
Also AWOL were power Democrats like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Gary Peters, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, and Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic candidate for Stabenow’s vacated seat. Late Sunday night, Biden spoke again, this time from the White House.
Immediately after it ended, Fox News jumped on his verbal gaffes because he called his predecessor “former Trump” and twice referred to the ballot box as the “battle box,” perhaps a Freudian slip. The president referred to the “need for us to lower the temperature in our politics.”
In referring to political violence, along with citing the Trump shooting, Biden spoke vaguely of the Jan. 6 riots and the plot in Michigan for right-wing radicals to kidnap and possibly murder Gov. Whitmer. Biden cited the overall tone of general debate.
“The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated,” he said. “It’s time to cool it down . . . Hate must have no safe harbor.”
Oh, but it does. So — unless the party conventions or outside events bring major changes — these are the two choices facing us in November.
One is a mildly successful incumbent and sincere Catholic who is gradually losing his grip and the support of his own party.
The other is a cynical Bible salesman of no particular faith with a martyr complex who is worshiped by followers with Messianic delusions.
Therefore, as any believer in any religion might pray: God help us all.
