Trump Assassination Attempt Disrupted Everything—We Just Don’t Know How

There is already movement back in Washington as well.

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages)

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has affected not only the Republican convention and the presidential campaign but also business on Capitol Hill. 

Following Saturday’s shooting, elected Democrats have called for calm while offering swift and univocal condemnations of political violence. Among Republicans, while there have been widespread calls for unity, reactions from some GOP lawmakers and conservative pundits have been more, well, complicated. 

For a brief moment between Saturday and Sunday, it seemed as though both the Trump and Biden presidential campaigns would halt operations. Fundraising activities were put on pause and the House and Senate campaign arms for both parties took a break. However, the Trump campaign resumed fundraising Sunday morning, and the NRSC and NRCC followed suit. Democrats, meanwhile, are still keeping both feet on the brake. A source familiar with DCCC’s strategy confirmed their fundraising is still on pause for the time being.

Lawmakers like Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a prominent contender to become Trump’s running mate, responded to the attempt on Trump’s life with rage directed at Democrats.

Vance explicitly blamed Biden for the attack:

Today is not just some isolated incident.

The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.

That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.

Vance also lashed out at other lawmakers, such as former Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the ranking member of the Homeland Security committee and the former chairman of the January 6th Committee. Vance called for Thompson to be kicked out of Congress because back in April he introduced legislation that would remove Secret Service protection from convicted felons serving prison terms—obviously a messaging bill aimed at Trump.

While Vance’s aggression has not been fully echoed by Republicans following the attack, it’s possible that it’s improved his standing to become Trump’s running mate.

That choice, Trump has said, will be made today. As with all important decisions faced by the former president, picking a VP candidate will be a gametime decision. My Bulwark colleague Marc Caputo reports:

Trump is expected, but not required, to announce his vice presidential pick today at the Republican National Convention, and many advisers, confidants, and Republicans familiar with his process believe the job is Vance’s to lose. Vance has consistently been at or near the top of Trump’s shortlist since his campaign began vetting candidates in the spring. The Ohio senator counts top supporters in Trump’s orbit, including Donald Trump Jr. and longtime adviser Roger Stone. And several of those Trump insiders who back other candidates, such as Doug Burgum and Marco Rubio, have come to believe Vance is the likeliest pick. Even Trump’s notorious aversion to facial hair probably won’t be enough to keep him from naming the barbate 39-year-old as his no. 2.

In posting belligerently, Vance channeled the perpetually enraged and indignant wing of his party, including two masters of ragecraft: House members Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Collins claimed Biden “sent the orders” to kill Trump, while Greene has been on a nonstop tirade against her enemies real or imagined, at one point suggesting there might be “something a lot more sinister and bigger” going on. “Fine call me a conspiracy theorist. I don’t give a damn,” she wrote. (If the shoe fits. . .)

I caught up with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) this morning outside Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, where the RNC kicks off today. Asked whether the shooting on Saturday altered the race, Marshall predicted that it had effectively ended any attempt to push Biden aside as the Democratic nominee:

The biggest thing that I’ve seen is there’s not a Democrat that wants to be the nominee. This has totally moved the needle so far that I don’t think Kamala Harris would even take the nomination if she was approached about it. They’re stuck with Joe Biden. They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place and they’re stuck with his policies. 

Marshall’s take isn’t shared by all actual Democrats. But it did reflect the sense of momentum Republicans have been riding since the debate, which only grew on Saturday. That’s because they can now, nominally, be focused on unity over hammering the president.

Trump himself is talking that way, for now. The former president said in an interview on Saturday that, while the first draft of his presidential nomination acceptance speech targeted Biden, he is rewriting it with a new focus on healing:

This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago.

If true, this would represent a remarkable shift in character—one that would be welcomed by anyone else seeking an alternative to the rage and hostility that have played a structural role in American politics (and Trump’s personal rise) for the past decade. 

But we’ll have to see if unity and healing remain at the top of Trump’s mind between now and that speech. No one should forget that Trump has for years been one of the loudest instigators and apologists of political violence: You can draw a line from his defense of white supremacists in Charlottesville to January 6th to his mockery of the 2022 attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. 

By mid-morning, Trump had outlined a form of “unity” that he envisioned: one in which the nation came “together” to “end” all the legal investigations into his conduct during and after his time in office.

Style report

Vendors at the convention don’t seem to have received the unity memo. Instead, they’re selling merchandise with violent rhetoric inside the perimeter. While exploring the sprawling campus, I spotted a couple of t-shirts (the ones on the left and the right below) calling for retaliation for those who don’t show sufficient patriotism.

If you recall the Iowa State Fair edition of Press Pass, these types of shirts declaring one’s position in the culture war are commonplace at conservative events. 

This will extend beyond the campaign

As much of the GOP heads to Milwaukee for the national convention, House Republicans who are still on the Hill are moving quickly to investigate the attempted assassination of Trump that left one rallygoer dead and two others critically injured.

Hours after the shooting, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle requesting her testimony at a hearing slated for July 22, the Monday after the convention concludes. Comer wrote:

Today, President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt when a gunman fired a weapon at him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. At least one bystander is dead. The tremendous bravery of the individual United States Secret Service agents who protected President Trump, eliminated the gunman, and possibly averted more loss of life cannot be overstated.

The Committee on Oversight and Accountability has initiated an investigation into today’s assassination attempt on President Trump and requests your voluntary appearance at a full Committee hearing on July 22, 2024. 

Members of the Oversight Committee are also slated to receive a bipartisan briefing from the Secret Service on Tuesday.

While the Oversight Committee has spent much of the past two years exploring conspiracy theories and trying to advance the GOP’s political agenda items, this could be something different: an actually important hearing and a valuable investigation. The security lapses, lag in response time, and still-unknown details of the attempt on Trump’s life need to be publicly brought to light. Providing a congressional response to a security event with major national ramifications like this is one of the primary purposes of the committee. 

Whether the committee is actually up to the task is another question. 

It has been beset with infighting during the 118th Congress. Hearings have devolved into shouting matches, personal insults, and displays of nudity of questionable relevance to the committee’s work. It has a reputation for prioritizing attention-grabbing stunts over meaningful policy.¹

Oversight’s role is separate from the actual ongoing criminal investigation into this weekend’s shooting. It will examine how the Secret Service responded to the shooter to determine what they did correctly and by the book and what they did wrong, including any potential breaches in protocol that may have contributed to at least one death and a wounded former president.

Some members of the committee have already taken up the attack as a political tool, attempting to either dismantle the cases against Trump or further divide the public. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), one of Oversight’s loudest partisans, announced that she will be introducing legislation to hold Cheatle “accountable” for the assassination attempt, suggesting without any evidence that its near success could be attributed only to either the Secret Service’s incompetence or some kind of deliberate plot. What kind of legislation Boebert wishes to propose is unclear, but she has made up her mind to do something. As with her past messaging bills, things like gathering relevant information or letting proper investigative processes run their course are basically irrelevant to her goals.

But one specific theme is already emerging, and it’s a perennial GOP favorite. Committee member Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) cited diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts as a potential culprit for any failings by the Secret Service. He told Fox News:

Somebody really dropped the ball. You've got a DEI, basically—a DEI initiative person who heads up our Secret Service. You know, she was working at Pepsi before this. I know she was a former Secret Service agent, but still, this is what happens when you don't put the best players in.

Prior to Saturday’s events, Oversight was already investigating the Secret Service for an unrelated matter. In a May letter to Cheatle, Comer probed for information on an incident involving a Secret Service agent on Vice President Kamala Harris’s detail who had to be restrained after attacking a superior. The agent’s actions appeared to be the result of a mental health episode.

In the letter, Comer speculated that the disgruntled agent’s employment “raised concerns within the agency about the hiring and screening process for this agent: specifically whether previous incidents in her work history were overlooked during the hiring process as years of staff shortages had led the agency to lower once stricter standards as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion effort.” 

In addition to the House Oversight Committee, the Homeland Security committees in the House and Senate are poised to launch investigations of their own.

1. This is true also of past iterations of the Oversight Committee. Too often, lawmakers on both sides view the role of Oversight as providing defense for the guy in the White House, if he belongs to the House majority’s party, or serving as attack dogs if he doesn’t. This is why the committee attracts the chamber’s most natural entertainers. The last two Republican chairs of Oversight before Comer became paid Fox News personalities immediately after retiring from Congress.