Trump assassination attempt: Why it's noteworthy for India

“Let me get my shoes.” That’s what Donald Trump said as his panicked Secret Service guards were trying to hustle him to safety after a would-be assassin’s bullet had grazed his right ear.

A moment later, presumably after putting on his shoes, Trump stood up, encircled by his guards, his face streaked with blood, and pumped his fist in the air and shouted, “Fight, fight, fight!”

Trump escaped an assassination attempt by a whisker at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A few centimetres to the right—from the gunman’s angle—and the former US president would have been dead before he hit the floor.

But the one thing that even those who think Trump is Satan in human form cannot deny is that the man has exceptional physical courage. He suddenly feels a scrape on his ear, touches it, and sees blood on his hand. He is pushed to the ground by his guards; people are screaming in fear all around; and then he stands up, unafraid and more cussed than ever, and calls out to his supporters. This will quite possibly be the defining moment of the 2024 US presidential campaign—Trump, bloodied but defiant.

It’s interesting to see how the thriving Trump-is-the-devil media industry in the US responded. Minutes after the shooting, CNN led with the headline, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.” What did CNN think, he tripped? “Secret Service: Donald Trump safe after popping sounds heard at rally,” announced MSNBC—popping sounds when a thousand people in the crowd are shrieking and ducking? About two minutes after the incident, an analyst (whatever that means) on CNN opined: “Donald Trump and the people around him perceive themselves to be under threat…and that is not legitimate.”

The New York Times started its coverage with the headline, “Trump rushed off stage after chaos at rally”. It took the paper hours to admit that there had been an assassination attempt and put the A-word in a headline. But even then, it began its report with: “The former president was holding a rally when he said he was shot in his ear.” This is technically correct—Trump did post on his social media network, Truth Social, that he had been shot in the ear. But is it fair journalism to put it as Trump’s claim rather than what is true and acknowledged by the Secret Service, the FBI, and the local police?

In India, the term “Godi media” has become a much-bandied-about phrase. What do you call the American media that finds it difficult even to acknowledge that a presidential candidate they don’t like has just survived a lethal attack?

I was shocked by the shooting, but not surprised. Because over the last few years, statements by Trump-haters have almost been encouraging attempts to kill him. Democratic Party spokespersons and legislators have regularly appeared on TV channels and called for civil uprisings and street violence to stop Trump. Prominent figures like actor Robert De Niro, singers Madonna and Moby, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman have explicitly said or hinted that they wish Trump was dead. There is a long list of minor celebrities and talking heads who have asked for Trump to be stabbed to death, beheaded, his corpse fed to carrion crows, and so on. Joe Biden has said that all Trump supporters are fascist terrorists and that “it’s time to put Trump in the bull’s eye". The shooter seems to have taken the term “bull’s eye” literally.

Democrats have loudly and consistently lied that Trump is anti-abortion (he is not and says that abortion should be legal up to 15 weeks, and under his leadership, the Republican Party, for the first time in 40 years, has not called for a national abortion ban), he’s anti-LGBTQ (in fact, he supports gay marriage), he’s anti-working class (he wants to stop illegal migration and raise tariffs on Chinese imports to help American blue-collar workers), and he wants to cut Medicare and social security (he has never said so). They claim that if Trump returns as president, he will suspend the Constitution and end democracy (just as we were told in 2019 and a few months ago about Narendra Modi getting re-elected).

In April, a Democrat Congressman actually introduced legislation flamboyantly acronymed DISGRACED to scrap Secret Service protection for Trump. The bill did not pass, but if it had, there would possibly have been many more crazies out there trying to kill him, with much less fear of failure.

The US leftist media has been portraying Trump as another Hitler—the latest cover of the magazine New Republic even carries a Photoshopped picture of Trump with the Hitler moustache. It is unclear to me which six million people of what race, religion, or sex preferences Trump will kill if he returns to the White House. This supposed mass murderer is the only US president in the last 50 years who did not start a war!

Of course, Trump may have done crooked deals as a businessman, and he lies a hell of a lot, sometimes to serve his interests and sometimes due to ignorance or his own fantasies. He is also a megalo-egotist. But the point here is that the anti-Trumpers, with the aid and abetment of Western mainstream media, drummed up such a hysteria about Trump being a monster that, in hindsight, it seems like it was just a matter of time before some deranged loser tried to kill him. Social media has been flooded with posts that express delight that someone tried to kill Trump. Many are regretting what the shooter missed. Some are even speculating that this was a gimmick that Trump himself engineered. This is incredible nonsense.

This attack may well win Trump the election. But the vote is on November 5, and four months is a very long time in politics. Things could change radically, especially in these times of fleeting attention spans. What should worry us in India is that Narendra Modi has many times more enemies, and perhaps much more bitter ones, in our country than Trump does in the US.

This incident was a colossal failure on the part of the US Secret Service, whose job it was to protect Trump. It’s astonishing that a man could get within 150 yards of Trump with a long-range, telescope-sighted AR-15 automatic rifle. Modi is in close proximity to common people, whether directly or in his regular road shows, as much or more than Trump and Biden have been during their campaigns. Crazy people are often inspired by the acts of other crazies and their perverted dreams of glory. Indian security agencies should take note.

The author is former managing editor of Outlook, former editor of The Financial Express, and founding editor of Outlook Money, Open, and Swarajya magazines. He has authored books such as ‘The IITians: The Story of an Extraordinary Indian Institution and How its Alumni Are Reshaping the World’, ‘Fallen Angel: The Making and Unmaking of Rajat Gupta’, and ‘The Last War’. The views expressed in his column are personal, and do not reflect those of Firstpost. You can follow Sandipan Deb on Twitter @sandipanthedeb