Will an assassination attempt change politics in America?

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is helped off the stage by US Secret Service agents at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa., is the man the FBI has identified as the shooter at the Butler, Pa. Trump rally, in what law enforcement is calling an “assassination attempt.”

Some news organizations will choose not to say the name of the rally shooter, thinking that doing so would only glorify the now deceased suspect. But Thomas Matthew Crooks is a major part of what happened on Saturday. To keep him anonymous is to censor a key fact.

We can’t fail to acknowledge what Crooks did.

It was Thomas Matthew Crooks’ shocking actions that may be the thing that finally sobers up America.

We’ve been drunk with ideology and divided by politics for too long.

Crooks was a registered Republican, according to voter records. Three years ago, he made a $15 donation to ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic politicians. The extent of his political activity isn’t known as I write. But from his high school photo, he appeared to be a clean-cut white kid from a Pittsburgh suburb, not some radical activist. As to his mental state, nothing yet has been revealed.

We do know Crooks had a car full of explosives and an AR-15 type weapon. He was a reckless and irresponsible firearms owner (shooting into a crowd?) and not very skilled. His shots grazed the former president’s ear, killed one person, wounded at least two others and stunned everyone around the nation no matter what your political beliefs.

This 2021 photo provided by Bethel Park School District shows student Thomas Matthew Crooks who graduated from Bethel Park High School with the Class of 2022, in Bethel Park, Pa. Crooks was identified by the FBI as the shooter involved in an assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (Bethel Park School District via AP)

This isn’t supposed to happen in America.

In our country, the Constitution affords us a path to solve our differences. The First Amendment gives us free speech and the right to gather and express ourselves, which leads to debate.

It should not lead to gunfire.

Not in a land where politics is decided by the vote, and our voices are heard loudly by our ballots, not our bullets.

Soon after the shots were fired, the FBI reported that Crooks had been “neutralized.”

That’s the euphemism used to indicate Crooks was killed and the threat was abated.

Gone.

But was it?

The shooter may have been neutralized, but was America freed from its acrid sense of hate?

A chance to bring the country together?

Our politics has been so toxic, Saturday’s horrific event should be seen as an opportunity for all of us to turn down the rhetoric – by a lot.

For a while on Saturday, it seems everyone was civil.

Democrats were praying for Trump to live. Republicans were just shocked. All the cable news analysts were praying for Trump. That’s unity.

Is that our cue? This is the chance to condemn the shooter and stand up as one country, neutralized from our own divisive politics and united against the senseless use of gun violence as any kind of arbiter.

Politics can be a matter of life and death, but that isn’t supposed to be literal.

After the Saturday shooting, everyone was rooting for Trump, and why not? He’s an American, after all, and a human being just like all the rest of us.

Wouldn’t he do the same for us? Likely not. But I would hope so, if he truly wants to be president. We disagree on many fundamental points. And we will stay opposed on practically all policies. But we are not enemies. Or are we?

President Biden said it best at his news briefing Saturday night. Both the president and Trump reportedly spoke to each other after the shooting for the first time since their June 27 debate.

“There’s no place in America for this kind of violence, it’s sick, it’s sick,” said President Biden at a post-shooting news briefing. “It’s one of the reasons we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this, we cannot condone this.”

Later in an address to the nation on Sunday, the president asked “every American to recommit to what makes America” so special.

“Here in America, everyone is treated with dignity and respect, and hate should have no safe harbor,” President Biden said on nationwide TV. “We need to get out of our silos where we only listen to those with whom we agree; where misinformation is rampant; where foreign actors fan the flames of our division to shape the outcomes consistent with their interests not ours.”

And, of course, there was an appeal that competing visions of the campaign “always be resolved peacefully.”

“Stand up for our Constitution and the rule of law,” the president said. “Call for action at the ballot. Not for violence on our streets. That’s how democracy should work.”

But we are already too close to the edge. We don’t have to go back to the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981 to see how real a problem domestic political violence is in this country.

Think about the right-wing intruder who, on Oct. 28, 2022, went after Democratic Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, then used a hammer to nearly kill her husband Paul Pelosi.

David De Pape was convicted on assault and attempted kidnapping charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Political violence? We certainly saw it on Jan. 6, 2021 with the insurrection of the capital, which, ironically, was instigated by Donald Trump.

You might say this makes an assassination attempt on Trump just days before the Republican National Convention something Joe Biden might call an “inflection point.”

It would be if we could put the nasty politics aside, eschew our divisiveness, and realize what a massive step forward we could make as a country together.

Naive? Some think democracy is naive.

My optimism

Me, I want to hang on to that sliver of hope and optimism I noticed when good people saw the news on Saturday and just thought about the future of our country – and not about winning an election.

The unfortunate assassination attempt should be seen as a signal that it’s time to end the hyper-partisanship that ails us and to heal our open wounds.

It is time to reach out, work together. To see each other not as die-hard enemies but as members of the same team.

Asian Americans know what it’s like to be seen as enemies and foreigners by our fellow Americans. From the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII to the scapegoating of Asians during the pandemic, we have stood up to the hate.

Now all America must stand together and dare to be united as Americans for our democracy.

We must quickly condemn all those who will use this as an opportunity to fan the flames of division. Already on social media, Sen. J.D. Vance, a leading candidate to be Trump’s veep, is pointing fingers at Biden.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”’

That’s just false and irresponsible. Have you seen the right’s Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation doc that is written by more than 100 Trump staffers and advocates such things as rounding up undocumented people and placing them in camps?

It’s been a part of Trump’s hate-inducing rhetoric for so long. Who else says immigrants “are poisoning the blood of our country?”

That’s Trump talk. Now here’s an opening for change on all sides.

This should be a unifying moment to lift everyone, not just Trump’s base. The emotionally charged remnants of Saturday, like the images of a bloodied Trump and the flag, shouldn’t be politicized to unite one group of Americans against another. That would only feed the Trump base with notions of anger and vengeance and be a monumental misuse of this moment.

Instead, this is the reminder our politics could use a little of what my Hawaiian friends call aloha.

Going into the Republican convention week, the assassination should be a call to unite us all. But admittedly, the angry raised fist from Trump as he made his bloody exit only diminishes hope, especially if people follow their cult leader blindly.

Still, we shouldn’t squander a chance to try to end – or at least greatly reduce – the toxic rhetoric that has divided America.

Keep your focus on 20-year-old Thomas Michael Crooks, the shooter. In the name of our great country, we condemn his actions, as Americans, together.

If we don’t reject it now, we will miss a chance to stem a greater threat to our democracy than Donald Trump – the further growth of violence as political vengeance in America.

A failure to do so will only further normalize Trump and his followers, who truly believe that dividing the country is the best way to take over America.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He writes a column for Inquirer.net’s US Channel. See him on YouTube.com/@emilamok1  Contact him at  www.amok.com.