By Terry Manning
Here is a quick take for the impatient: I am deeply troubled by the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump. I’m equally troubled by the reactions many people expressed on social media and other outlets.
I have no easy answers for either.
Now that that’s out of the way, I will pick through what happened and offer my two cents on various aspects of the assassination attempt.
I am frustrated with how broken our major networks’ coverage is of breaking news events. By default, I am talking about television because most newspapers can’t air live coverage of major events.
I dislike how long “breaking news” banners are left in place across the bottom of screens. You shouldn’t call something “breaking news” if it happened and was resolved hours ago, but that has become a common practice. Not only is it misleading, but it cheapens the importance of breaking news that deserves immediate dissemination.
My biggest irritation this time was the insistence of talking heads talking even when they had nothing to share that was new or relevant. Just because the red light is glowing on top of the camera doesn’t mean that you have to keep spewing unsubstantiated information from sources reliable and otherwise.
As a news consumer trying to find out why there were loud popping sounds at a political rally, I prefer brevity and clarity over uncertain ramblings. Some of the networks seem so focused on being first that being accurate is an afterthought. And can we lose some of the adverbs and adjectives? Just tell me what happened. I will decide for myself if that sounds “scary” or “tragic.”
Like many observers, I was struck by the notion an armed shooter could get close enough to almost succeed. Many have asked, how could this happen? I will remind you Illinois teenager Kyle Rittenhouse walked up to police carrying an assault-type rifle and even tried to turn himself in after killing two unarmed demonstrators in Wisconsin. The police completely ignored him.
Conservatives love to blame Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other liberal bogeymen for violence, but sometimes — in fact, most of the time in these types of shootings — it’s just a white guy with a gun.
Reactions I saw on social media were almost as swift as the reactions at the scene of the rally in Pennsylvania. While people in the crowd turned to the TV cameras and began extending middle fingers and shouting vulgarities, others took to social media to try to figure out whom to blame.
One contingent comprised people who delighted in Trump surviving, but not as much as they delighted in the fact that the shooter failed his mission. I saw a post on Facebook with the instant classic photo of Trump shaking his fist in front of an American flag with the mocking caption, “Missed me.” I saw others calling the former president a “martyr” and “bulletproof.”
(The former copy editor in me can’t miss pointing out that if a bullet indeed grazed Trump’s ear, the shooter didn’t miss him and the former president is not in fact, bulletproof. And martyrs are killed, not merely wounded. But I digress.)
On the opposite end of the spectrum were those who immediately suspected a false-flag operation.
They questioned the shooter’s ability to access the site; the Secret Service’s lack of response to people in the crowd pointing at the shooter lying on a nearby rooftop; and the million-to-1 likelihood Trump could’ve been shot at and only suffered a wound to his ear. Then there was the former president rising from the scrum of Secret Service agents to find the cameras long enough to pump his fist and urge his supporters to “Fight!”
Throw in all this happening on the eve of the start of the Republican National Convention, and the coincidence was too much for these skeptics to bear.
And then there were the jokesters.
“Too bad the kid couldn’t shoot.”
“Pretty lousy sniper if you ask me.”
“Better luck next time.”
Those were disgusting, but they reflect how cavalierly we have come to treat gun violence in this country.
Pundits like to say there is no place in American politics for violence, but the fact is, violence has been threatened, even promised, for quite a while now. And with little pushback from some corners.
As if a bullet can tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican, or between a rabble-rousing president and a supporter cheering him on in the grandstand behind him.
Terry E. Manning is a Clemson graduate and worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.
