Why Trump merchandised his assassination attempt
Plus: This two-time Trump voter appeared in a Harris campaign ad. Then the harassment started.
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Why Trump merchandised his assassination attempt
This two-time Trump voter appeared in a Harris campaign ad. Then the harassment started.
Scroll to the end to see: how the U.S. Postal Service is saying thank you to health care workers 💌
Why Trump merchandised his assassination attempt
Former President Donald Trump said during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention just days after the failed assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pa., in July that he’d recount what happened to him that fateful day just once. “You’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell,” he said, recounting the fatal shooting wearing a bandage on his ear.
Apparently, it’s not that painful. Trump returned to the site of the assassination attempt Saturday for another rally, and polling taken after the shooting suggests why he’s happy to keep it top of mind. A July YouGov poll found 61% of U.S. adults believed Trump showed courage during the attack and 58% believed the shooting increased Trump’s chances of winning. Though Trump’s approval rating was negative during his entire presidency, suddenly after the attack, a 54% majority said he deserved sympathy.
Imagery of Trump raising his fist after the shooting is popular among his supporters, from a 6’3” sculpture of Trump made of nails erected in Butler to the cover of his newest book “Save America.” In Arizona’s Maricopa County, the image appears on signs at busy street intersections.
Compared to the other new piece of Trump iconography of the 2024 campaign, his mugshot, photos from the shooting show Trump as courageous and sympathetic, not facing criminal charges. Trump vowed less than a month after the shooting to return to Butler, but with recently unsealed court filings from special counsel Jack Smith bringing new focus on Trump’s election interference case and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the timing of his return helpfully redirected attention, if momentarily.
While third party vendors quickly turned out shirts that referenced the shooting after it happened, the Trump campaign is cashing in too. The $35 “Fight Fight Fight” tee shows Trump’s disembodied fist raised in the air, and a photo of Trump after the shooting is among the images used in his Taylor Swift-themed Eras tee. Other shirt designs stack the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!” on top of each other and another shows the immigration chart Trump was referring to before shots rang out.
For X owner Elon Musk, who formally endorsed Trump in the shooting’s immediate aftermath, Trump’s response to the attack justifies another term. His America PAC ran an ad showing a man sharing news of assassination attempt to encourage people to register to vote, and Musk attended Trump’s weekend rally in Butler, jumping for joy and arguing courage under fire is how to measure leadership.
“The true test of someone’s character is how they behave under fire,” Musk said. “We had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs, and another who is fist pumping after getting shot. Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Never mind the fact President Joe Biden, who Musk referenced as having trouble with stairs, isn’t seeking a second term, to Musk, the images of Trump after the shooting alone are all the evidence you need to judge his fitness for office. Musk summed up his reasoning thusly: “America is the home of the brave, and there’s no truer test than courage under fire, so who do you want representing America?”
For a man who mints fictional image of himself as NFTs for profit, the real-life image Trump seems most eager to reinforce is that of Trump the fighter, fist raised moments after a numnut would-be assassin’s bullet missed his mark.
It’s a moment that moved Musk and others, and whether or not swing or undecided voters feel similarly moved more than 100 days later could determine whether or not Trump gets a second term.
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This two-time Trump voter appeared in a Harris campaign ad. Then the harassment started.
Bob Lange, a farmer and two-time Trump voter from Malvern, Pa., soured on Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He’s now among the former Trump voters who’ve been recruited to convince their fellow party members to vote for Harris.
Lange and his wife Kristina, who voted for Trump in 2016 but didn’t in 2020 because of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic (“It seemed to me that he really didn't care or he didn't have a plan,” she told ABC 6 in Philadelphia), are the stars of a new Harris campaign ad called “Not Again” running on television and on 130 rural radio stations in Pennsylvania.
“Bob and I both voted for Donald Trump,” Kristina says in the ad. “Donald Trump divides people, we’ve already seen what he has to bring.”
Since the ad started airing, the couple says they’ve received hateful calls, social media comments, and emails to their business, and they’ve gone to the police who’ve stepped up patrols. Kristina told ABC 6 while she was reluctant to appear in the ad, “I realized that the message that we wanted to reach certain people was more important.”
The Langes’ ad is just one piece of the Harris campaign’s full-court press efforts to flip Republican voters. Harris appeared last week at a rally with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and her campaign has ads running on Fox News featuring the words of former Trump administration members who aren’t supporting him this time around, like his own former Vice President Mike Pence.
Outside groups are also pushing Republican voters to flip their vote. Though former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said she’s voting for Trump, not all her former supporters are following her lead. The group Haley Voters for Harris is airing a seven-figure ad buy for its spot featuring lifelong Republicans, like Ann, who’s voting Harris and banking on a Republican Congress. “With a likely Republican Senate, those checks and balances will keep our country sane,” she says.
Trump’s campaign hasn’t made an equivalent attempt to reach Democrats through co-partisan defectors, though they have tapped ex-Democrat and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii for digital ads asking people to check their voter registration.
Have you seen this?
Harris and Walz embark on media blitz amid Republican criticism that they're avoiding press. The pair will appear separately this week on podcasts, traditional TV, and late-night comedy shows. [NBC News]
“A whole lot of women out here are not aspiring to be humble”: Kamala Harris strikes a chord on ‘Call Her Daddy’ with a rejection of gender stereotypes. The statement came after host Alex Cooper asked Harris how she felt about an assertion by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, who said her own children “keep her humble,” whereas Harris “doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.” [Fast Company]
Senate Republicans’ strangely uneven spending map. The distribution of ad spending for Senate GOP candidates is highly lopsided, with a massive amount focused on Pennsylvania. [Politico]
There’s a new stamp honoring health care heroes. The Forever stamps, which spell out “Thank You” using medical symbols like a stethoscope and medical caduceus, were designed by Bryan Duefrene, and it “comes with our memory of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the critical role that health workers played, still fresh in our minds,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said. [U.S. Postal Service]
History of political design
“I’m Dick Cheney” button (ca. 1980s). Cheney, the last U.S. vice president to not run for president, was a White House chief of staff under Gerald Ford and later represented Wyoming in the U.S. House from 1979 to 1989.
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