Trump is 'afraid of the world he has helped to build': analysis

In the wake of the attempted assassination at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, there has been a concerted effort by President Donald Trump and his allies to fault their political opponents. But according to New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, it would be “dishonest to deny that [Trump] is responsible for shaping the environment in which we live — for creating an atmosphere in which these kinds of events are more likely.”

Trump and those in his orbit have attempted just such duplicity, with the president claiming “the hate speech of the Democrats” is “very dangerous for the country.” At the same time, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt argued, “The deranged lies and smears against the president, his family, his supporters have led crazy people to believe crazy things, and they are inspired to commit violence because of those words.” And many other Republicans have made similar assertions.

“But this argument does not stand up to scrutiny,” writes Bouie. “Even the most heated language coming from Democrats over the past few years falls well within the boundaries of ordinary political discourse in the United States. No elected Democratic leader has called for violence against Trump or his allies. All have condemned such violence when it has taken place. And you would be hard-pressed to find anything different among Democratic Party officials and liberal activists.”

This is hardly the case with conservatives. Trump ally and former advisor Steve Bannon has suggested putting “heads on pikes” on “the two corners of the White House as a warning.” And for the president himself, “Fantasies of violence against political enemies are, in fact, a defining feature of Trump’s political language.”

While on the campaign trail in 2015, for example, he wondered whether the “Second Amendment people” could do anything about a President Hilary Clinton. He threatened “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” when faced with the George Floyd protests of 2020. He called for former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to be killed, and regularly refers to his political enemies as “vermin” and “the enemy within.” And then there’s the January 6 insurrection, during which Trump declared, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. We fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” And all of that is just the tip of the iceberg.

“In Trump we have a president who isn’t concerned with the impact of his language and the consequences of his words,” writes Bouie, “who delights in wielding them as a weapon against others, with no regard for what it might do or whom it might influence. He thought nothing, for example, of calling a group of Democratic lawmakers ‘traitors’ who were ‘guilty of seditious behavior at the highest level’ and who should be ‘arrested and put on trial’ and even punished with ‘DEATH!’ He thinks nothing of targeting individual critics with vitriolic social media posts and of threatening entire nations with total destruction.”

As a response to the latest attempt on his life, Trump has declared that he won’t be safe until he gets his secure ballroom. According to Bouie, while this is a demand driven largely by his “megalomania,” it also reflects Trump's “desire to isolate himself from the world.”

“This is a president who rarely travels beyond the confines of the White House compound or Mar-a-Lago,” says Bouie. “He rarely meets people where they are. More so than most who have held the office, he lives inside a bubble. Some of this is vanity. Some of it is laziness. But some of it, I think, is fear. Trump is afraid of the world. Which in a way might mean he is afraid of the world he has helped to build.”