By all appearances, a crazed would-be assassin just missed killing former president Donald Trump by a few inches. One or more of the shots, according to early news reports, killed an onlooker sitting behind Trump.
To be clear: The shooter missed sparking a bloody civil war by two inches.
The shooter’s intentions almost do not matter. Trump is so reviled by a large faction of this country and so beloved by another faction that, were he murdered, it would spark more violence.
President Joe Biden would be, to borrow a phrase of his, “put in the bullseye.” Trump supporters would look for ways to retaliate. Violent antifa extremists would rise in support of the assassin.
Consider what happened when Hamas murdered and raped thousands of Israelis in October 2023 — anti-Israel activists emerged from the woodwork to attack Israel. Think about what happened after a transgender shooter murdered students at the Christian school she had attended: there was an attempt to rally around the transgender community.
Both Trump haters and Trump defenders would have been spurred to action. And there’s plenty of reason to believe things would have gotten pretty bad in this case.
The United States has not had a political assassination in the memory of most people. If Trump were eliminated, it would, to be crass for a moment, help Democrats’ chances in November. If one party improved its political odds through murder, the reaction would be extremely violent.
I don’t believe we would have had a yearslong civil war if Trump were assassinated. But we would have had weeks or months of political violence.
