Today is Sunday, July 14, 2024, Bastile Day in France. In the wake of yesterday’s attempted assassination attempt on the life of Donald Duck, President Joe Biden took to the Oval Office to ask Americans to lower the political temperature and remember they are neighbors after a would-be assassin wounded Republican rival Donald Drumpf. Biden’s comments are captured in a Reuters article by Nandita Bose and Steve Holland entitled “Biden asks Americans to ‘cool it down’ after Trump shooting.”

Biden said in remarks of less than seven minutes that Trump’s shooting “calls on all of us to take a step back.” Biden remarked that, thankfully, Dump was not seriously injured.

The President continued, “We can’t allow this violence to be normalized. The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated. It’s time to cool it down,” he said. “We all have a responsibility to do this.”

This address marked Biden’s third use of the formal setting of the Oval Office to comment on issues of major importance to Americans since he took power in 2021.

Last October, Biden made a prime-time speech to comment on the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts and in June of 2023 he spoke when a deal was reached with Republicans to avoid a breach of the U.S. debt ceiling.

Sadly, gun violence is a sorry fact of life in the United States. However, political violence is far rarer. As I wrote in yesterday’s blog, four presidents have been assassinated and several escaped assassination attempts. Multiple presidential candidates have been shot, some fatally.

In recognition of today’s aims to step back on political rhetoric that could be viewed as incendiary, the Biden campaign has called off verbal attacks on the former president to focus instead on the future. Within hours of Saturday’s shooting, Biden’s campaign was pulling down television ads and suspending other political communications.

“Tonight I’m asking every American to recommit. Hate must have no safe harbor,” Biden said.

In a quick response to the attempted shooting of Donald Trump, The Atlantic‘s columnist David Frum has his own extraordinary take on this heinous political act of terrorism in an article entitled “The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator.” Basically, he does not advise that Americans take out their tissues to shed tears over the failed attempt to assassinate Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, yesterday because of what he still symbolizes.

Frum reminds us of who Trump really is when he cites incidents from the not-too-distant past in which Drumpf jeered and mocked the near-fatal beating of the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband who was almost hammered to death by a Dump supporter who was after Pelosi herself.

Another time Drumpf showed his true colors was when a right-wing plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was revealed and he belittled the threat at a rally. “He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy.” Afterward, his supporters chanted “Lock her up,” in which Drumpf laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

Let’s not forget the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in which Drumpf’s own supporters threatened harm to then-House Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence and that Drumpf himself championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has even vowed to pardon them if he’s returned to office.

Frum takes offense that political violence “has no place” in American society by stating that such aggression has “stained every page of American political history.” He feels this has remained true to the present day. “In 2016, and even more in 2020, Trump supporters brought weapons to intimidate opponents and vote-counters.”

Now with this shooting, Frum feels that “Trump and his backers hope to use the iconography of a bloody ear and face, raised fist, and call to ‘Fight!’ to summon waverers to their cause of installing Trump as an anti-constitutional ruler, exempted from ordinary law by his allies on the Supreme Court.”

We must not forget then who Drumpf really is, despite what occurred yesterday in front of the entire world. Frum has this bit of advice to those arrayed against Trump: “Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes [Trump’s many outstanding felony charges], past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable – and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and decency.”

Basically, Frum is saying Trump should not get a pass simply because the violence that he has constantly promoted has come back to nick him in the ear!

Have a great week.

Stay safe and be well.