Can Trump be protected from the evils he seems bent on stirring up?

I have been saying the exact motive of the young man from rural Pennsylvania who tried assassinating the former president is not that mysterious. He was clearly someone who believed political violence is an acceptable alternative to democratic politics, and this was evidenced by, you know, his trying to assassinate the former president.

A man who believes political violence is an acceptable alternative to democratic politics is a man who’s been steeped in rightwing politics, which is to say, he’s a man who listens to what Donald Trump has to say about Jews, immigrants, Black people and the republic itself. Put two and two together, and you don’t need the FBI or any other law enforcement body to tell you Trump was a victim of rightwing political violence, which is another way of saying he reaped what he sowed.

That, to me, is the biggest story of our time. Rightwing political violence is such a threat to democracy, freedom and the rule of law that even the country’s leading advocate of rightwing political violence is not safe from it. Indeed, his life remains in grave danger, as he continues to stoke hatreds of racial and sexual minorities while also knowing that in doing so, he’s taking his life into his own hands.

Worse, Trump and the Republicans are preventing wider discussion of the effect of rightwing political violence on democratic politics. After all, they don’t want to deter people from voting for Trump, though they might also try killing him if the conditions are right. He needs them to bully Democratic voters and GOP officials who might reconsider loyalty to him. His attempted assassination should have shown how fragile he is. Authoritarianism is a house of cards. As it is, however, we’re still wondering about the assassin’s exact motives.

Even so, his exact motive is important, as is any declaration from the law enforcement body that ascertains what that motive is. So I hope Tuesday’s testimony by the FBI’s second-in-command moves the needle somewhat. According to NPR, FBI investigators found “a social media account featuring antisemitic and anti-immigration comments that investigators believe to be associated with the gunman.”

“There were over 700 comments posted; some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature," FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told a session of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.

Abbate was circumspect. There’s more digging to do. But I don’t think he’d offer evidence of the role of rightwing political violence in Trump’s attempted assassination if he were not fairly confident in the strength of that evidence. Moreover, the FBI, as an institution, tends to overlook the realities of rightwing political violence. (The bureau is majority white, and its agents are often sympathetic to rightwing politics, though they may not share its affinity for violence.) The evidence must be pretty strong if it can overcome that blind spot.

Yet for all the public interest in the assassin’s motive, the Republicans on the Senate committees didn’t seem interested. Instead of wanting to know why he tried killing Trump, they wanted to know why the Secret Service allowed him to be in a position to try killing him. That’s not unreasonable, to be sure. The Secret Service screwed up. But let’s not pretend the assassin’s motive doesn’t matter to the Republicans.

US Senator and vice presidential pick JD Vance was quick to assign motive even before the assassin’s gun stopped smoking: “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” he said. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

But if it’s not the right motive, they seem uninterested. They’d rather blame institutions, in this case the FBI or Secret Service, to gin up conspiracies about Trump’s victimhood by the Democrats or “the deep state.” US Senator Roger Marshall, of Kansas, told the acting head of the Secret Secret his institution has “some type of a cultural problem.”

That wouldn’t be so bad, I figure, if everyone else, especially the Washington press corps, did not play along with their demagoguery. Even when the FBI uncovers real evidence of a real assassin who really was participating in rightwing politics, and who really did believe political violence is an acceptable alternative to democratic politics, reporters don’t seem to notice the significance of it. It doesn’t fit the framing of the news, which is to say, the GOP’s preference for blaming enemies for the bad things that happen to happen to Donald Trump.

In the end, the Republicans on the Senate committees probably don’t need the FBI to tell them about the assassin’s motive. They already know. They already know for the same reasons I already know. The difference is that I don’t think that fact is damned inconvenient. Indeed, a wider conversation about the dangers of rightwing political violence would be a great service to America as well as a practical way of protecting Trump from the evils he seems bent on stirring up.

It may be too late for Trump, though. Anything short of complete rightwing politics is going to be seen as compromise, which is going to be seen as a betrayal so complete as to be worthy of assassination.