Donald Trump is still a dangerous threat to democracy

And Democrats can’t let people forget it.

Welcome to a Sunday evening edition of Progress Report.

So, how was your weekend? Anything crazy happen? Personally, a big breaking news event forced me to rewrite much of the newsletter you’re going to read below, but that’s the business. There will be a follow-up newsletter tomorrow with more policy and election news.

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Democrats like to think of themselves as the adults in the room, always ready to respond to a serious problem or tragedy with sober platitudes and preemptive concessions, renouncing their own out of fear of blowback. Already prone to bringing spatulas to a knife fight, this reflex could turn the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump into the nail in the coffin of competitive elections.

Democrats defaulted to this posture immediately in the wake of the shooting yesterday, with leaders and representatives issuing statement after statement condemning political violence and calling for a return to “civility and respect in our politics,” as former president Obama put it. As soon as the news broke, President Joe Biden’s campaign told reporters that it was rushing to pull its advertising, giving the GOP full control of the airwaves during this week’s RNC.

Then Republicans grabbed the megaphone, lodging vile accusations against Democrats and “the radical left” for inspiring the shooting, bad-faith allegations that continued even after a very different picture began to emerge. Many of their most prominent directly blamed Joe Biden, a man they also say is suffering from dementia.

Georgia Rep. Mike Collins said that Biden “gave the orders” and called for his arrest (forgetting that the Supreme Court just gave presidents immunity for criminal acts), Ohio Sen. JD Vance asserted that Biden’s rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” and Rep. Steve Scalise called this an example of “far left lunatics act[ing] on violent rhetoric.”

The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, did not have a large online footprint, at least on conventional social networks, but a few things are known about him at this point. Crooks was 20-years-old, a registered Republican, possessed an AR-15, and yesterday was wearing a t-shirt from Demolition Ranch, the largest gun nut channel on YouTube.

All evidence points to the far-right, except for a $15 donation he sent online to a scammy, nominally Democratic-aligned PAC in 2020, which is unfortunately the one piece of information that seems to be circulating in the absence of Democratic pushback (see the responses I’m getting on Twitter).

Republicans, whose cynicism is the only type of renewable energy they support, are seizing on it. A tweet by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott previewed out rhetorical and tactical narrative that the GOP will attempt to establish in the days to come.

“Let’s be clear: This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.”

The message is already giving Democrats the shivers.

"The real question is whether in two weeks we can go back and declare Trump a threat to the country,” one Democratic strategist told Reuters. “That was our playbook, and it's fair, but unclear how much of our spurs were taken off.”

Here’s the thing: Trump was a grave threat to the country before the shooting and remains one today. What happened in Butler, PA yesterday does not change that. If anything, it makes him more dangerous, because Trump’s acolytes are already misusing the word “martyr” and redoubling their dedication to him.

They’re now selling these shirts online and to losers at the Wildwood, NJ boardwalk.

Trump’s entire schtick consists of inflammatory statements, he has a long and successful record of both implicitly and explicitly urging his supporters to commit violence, and he has spent the entirety of the past three and a half years trying to overturn the 2020 election and sowing distrust in the American electoral system. He speaks in fascistic rhetoric and yanks the right fringe to the mainstream with warnings about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of Americans and other vile accusations.

Who are they trying to impress?

Donald Trump is now running for a second term shaped by retribution and dedicated to the erosion of government, and thanks to the Supreme Court, he will be able to break laws with no concern for personal consequences. There was overwhelming public outrage about that ruling, and nothing has changed to give anybody any indication that Trump would be more trustworthy with that power.

Yet Democratic leaders are clearly afraid of pushback and accusations of “politicizing” the shooting, which took the life of at least one attendee. They obviously had to register their relief that Trump survived the attempt on his life, but further deference would be a mistake, not least because it would be a tacit admission of guilt.

And unfortunately, that’s exactly what the Biden campaign is planning to do:

Rather than verbally attacking Trump in the coming days, the White House and the Biden campaign will draw on the president's history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the "disorder" created by campus protests over the Israel-Gaza conflict, campaign officials said on condition of anonymity.

It’s hard to fathom why Democrats are going on the defensive against such bad-faith accusations that have no basis in reality, especially given how much trouble they already face. Who are they trying to impress? If somebody truly thinks Joe Biden is responsible for Donald Trump being shot, or say they’re willing to change their vote based on Democrats’ pointing out that Republicans still represent an existential threat to American life, they were never going to vote for Biden in the first place.

This shooting has brought out the worst of the troglodytes who have been encouraged and empowered by the former president. Conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and far-right provocateurs rushed to center stage, seizing the early moments after the incident to cause chaos and stir hatred. We’re up against far more than doomsday preppers and basement trolls, too: Elon Musk popped up on Twitter to formally pledge his support for Trump after the shooting, and shortly after, his website promoted this live stream to me:

Soon after, it replaced that stream with this one, featuring sex trafficker Andrew Tate, far-right quack Alex Jones, and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.

New information has begun trickling out about the shooter, thus far painting him as a severely bullied loner who wore hunting and military gear to school. My guess is that little of what emerges will suggest that he was a member of the “radical left,” but we know from repeated experience that continued silence from Democrats will allow rumors and innuendo fester and grow.

While Donald Trump regularly dismissed shooting victims and hate crimes without consequence, Democrats are guilty of doing the exact opposite. Because they default away from politics and rejoice in self-flagellation, little has been made of the fact that the shooter used an AR-15, the semi-automatic weapon that is used in most mass shootings. The public is overwhelmingly in favor of stricter gun laws, and incidentally, Biden tweeted about his support for banning semi-automatic firearms earlier in the day on Saturday, but has remained silent about it since.

Things weren’t exactly going swimmingly for Democrats before Saturday night, and now Republicans are bragging to the press that the assassination attempt all but sealed the election for Donald Trump. That Democrats have seemingly given up on replacing Biden, at least for now, only makes that prediction more likely to come true.

I started talking about Democrats needing another nominee last fall, quickly reasserted the point after the debate (costing me more than a few paid subscribers, if you want to help me out!), and still believe there is time to replacing Biden on the ticket. But no matter who winds up as the nominee, Democrats need to reassert themselves immediately with more policy proposals (more on that this coming week) and a populist message that motivates voters and reminds them that Trump and the entire depraved political apparatus around him are as dangerous as ever.

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🙁 💸 Baltimore: Local officials are seeking to keep voters from weighing in on a “baby bond” ballot initiative this November. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and the City Council filed a lawsuit to strike the initiative, which was would send one-time payments of $1000 to every baby born in Baltimore, arguing that it illegally bypassed the legislative process. They did insist that they don’t oppose the idea, which they can prove by passing it into law themselves.

🙄 👩‍⚕️ Florida: Before voters weigh in on constitutional amendments in Florida, the government performs an assessment of how its passage would financially impact the state. It’s supposed to be a straightforward and nonpartisan process, but abortion rights advocates are accusing the Financial Impact Evaluation Conference of skewing the results.

A circuit court has already thrown out one unfair assessment of the amendment, but which wasn’t enough to discourage the FIEC from pulling the same trick again. It’s what they were hired to do — Gov. Ron DeSantis’s replaced some of the FIEC’s neutral experts with conservative activists from places like the Heritage Foundation, and the irony of them costing the state more money with these lawsuits would be funnier if it weren’t such a bleak example of how conservatives have thoroughly infiltrated and politicized government at every level.

⚕️🪧 Arkansas: At least abortion rights will be on the ballot in Florida. Over in Arkansas, more than 100 voters gathered at the statehouse yesterday to protest the secretary of state’s decision to reject an amendment that would protect reproductive rights up to at least 18 weeks.

Organizers gathered enough signatures to qualify, but Secretary of State John Thurston declared that they did not submit a required document, which he argued invalidated more than 14,000 of the 101,000 collected; Arkansas requires around 90,000 signatures. The coalition of activists reject Thurston’s assertion and say that they submitted all necessary paperwork and will challenge the decision.

👌 🗳️ Idaho: Let’s end on a positive note from a place that doesn’t often provide good news. The state’s ballot initiative activists have done it again, officially qualifying an amendment that would create open primaries and ranked choice general elections in the state. It’s probably the best chance to foster more moderate politicians in the bright red state, which is why Idaho Republicans absolutely hate it.

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