Making Sense with Sam Harris - #375 — On the Attempted Assassination of President Trump

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

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Welcome to the Make It Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Okay, well, not much happening in the world. I'm recording late in the day on Monday, so about 48 hours after the attempted assassination of former President Trump. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this when I speak to Anne Applebaum on the podcast later in the week. Over at Substack, I've written a flurry of short posts in the last two weeks or so, all on politics, all of them arguing that the Biden campaign is over, whether or not Biden and his team realize it. And I think that's even more true today. I don't see how Biden runs against Trump in the aftermath of this near assassination,

which as horrible as it is and was, and I'll talk about that, the net result for Trump is about as good as you could imagine. Had this been stage managed by Satan, it could not have been better for Trump. So let's just say that I think the Biden campaign is even more doomed than it was last week, but perhaps any Democratic campaign is doomed at this point. That remains to be seen. Obviously, Biden hasn't dropped out yet, so all of this is academic for the moment. But after Saturday, I think, you have to expect we will have a second term of President Trump. I don't know what prediction markets are saying at this point, but it has been an extraordinary 48 hours.

I think I'll just read the short post I wrote yesterday about the attempt on Trump's life. First, one thing I didn't say in the post is, had the shooter succeeded, whatever you think about Trump and the risks he poses to our democracy, that outcome would have been catastrophic. Nothing good would have come from a successful act of political violence, which is a very long and callous way of saying that I am very happy the shooter missed. Obviously, one person did die, a man protecting his family. That is absolutely tragic. And I believe two people are in critical condition. So the whole thing is awful. But for

anybody out there who imagines it would have been better, all things considered, if Trump had been killed, again, even from a completely callous point of view that cares nothing for the man or his family or his friends or anyone else, if you're just hoping for a certain political outcome, I think you're completely delusional if you think blowing his head off on television would have resulted in something good in America. Our entire society quite literally dodged a bullet along with the man himself, which, as everyone has observed and everyone must concede, the fact that he was almost entirely unharmed and with the difference of an inch would have been certainly killed. That part was

astounding, but also his behavior in the immediate aftermath, and the resulting photos and video, although the photos have been most impactful. You just have to join the chorus of amazement, especially given his persona and his political needs, his upraised fist, his attitude. The man had the presence of mind to stage manage his own near assassination perfectly. And I don't mean to make a cynical point here. That was genuinely impressive. Anyway, I don't know how any Democrat successfully runs against that imagery, especially because of points I raise in this piece on Substack. The title is Stepping Back from the Precipice. In the aftermath of yesterday's events, we must hold three truths in mind simultaneously.

The first is that political violence of any kind is horrific and obscene. Despite the widespread moral confusion evident on social media, the attempted assassination of former President Trump was simply a tragedy for our country. And in response to this truth, we must do whatever we can to restore civility and basic decency to our politics. But there is a second truth, now all but unutterable, and it is this. No one has done more to destroy civility and basic decency in our politics than Donald Trump. No one, in fact, has done more to increase the threat of political violence. Unlike any president in modern history, Trump brings out the worst in both his enemies and his friends. His influence

on American life seems almost supernaturally pernicious. The problem for Democrats is that any observation of this second truth, a truth that seems likely to darken and expand in the aftermath of yesterday's attack, will now be condemned as rancorous and immoral, or worse, as an incitement to further political violence. Every necessary criticism of Trump's authoritarianism, fondness for dictators, fraudulence, personal corruption, hostility to the rule of law, and fathomless dishonesty will be mistaken for, or cynically construed as, a symptom of the very political disease we must cure, telling the truth about the actual risks that Trump and Trumpism still pose to our democracy just became much more difficult. As we await further details about the gunman, it is important that we embrace a third truth.

Whether or not it becomes easy to detect a coherent motive or set of influences, we must recognize that he represented no one and nothing beyond his own abomination. And depending on what we learn about him, this truth could prove dangerously elusive. It may even seem to contradict the second truth adduced above. Didn't I just suggest that Trump himself has behaved so irresponsibly as to increase the risk of political violence? Yes, and he has done so repeatedly. For instance, in 2016, candidate Trump mused that a staunch defender of the Second Amendment

might want to kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from appointing judges that could threaten our gun rights. to kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from appointing judges that could threaten our gun rights. This single utterance represents a shocking and unprecedented violation of a political norm, merely one among hundreds that Trump carelessly shattered, both as a candidate and as president. However, had there been a subsequent attempt on Clinton's life, it would have been wrong to have held Trump directly responsible for the violence, because there was a vast gulf between his words, however reckless, and a sincere incitement to murder, and there is a further gulf between incitement and the act of climbing a roof with a rifle and attempting to kill another human being. We cannot allow the lunatic behavior of a

disturbed young man to further derange our politics. Let me state the second truth more starkly, in case the third still isn't clear. There are tens of millions of Americans who believe that the world would be a better place without Donald Trump in it. And if he were to die in his sleep sometime before Election Day, they would not mourn him. And if he were to die in his sleep sometime before Election Day, they would not mourn him. I suspect that literally millions of Americans would celebrate the man's natural death. This is not merely a sign of how politically unhinged we have become as a nation. It is a sign of how unhinged Trump has made us.

Fully half of our neighbors are desperate to have this man out of their lives, but very few of them would defend what happened yesterday, for obvious reasons. The first is surely that they don't support murder, but most of them also understand the first truth above. Political violence in any direction, for any stated purpose, harms us all. If an ordinary Republican like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, John McCain, or Mitt Romney had been shot under identical circumstances, what would happen next? This is a surprisingly easy question to answer. We can be confident that any of these men would soon step before the cameras, very likely in the company of his Democratic opponent, and call for unity in America. Having been brought to the precipice, a normal Republican would seek to lead our nation back to safety.

He would emphasize not his personal magnificence, the heroic sacrifices he has made for his supporters, or the vengeance he will soon unleash upon his enemies, but the necessity for calm. He would assert his confidence in the strength of our democracy and the integrity of our electoral process. Above all, he would speak about the sacred significance of a peaceful transfer of power. Is this what anyone expects from Trump in the coming days? His first words to the crowd, fist raised, appear to have been, fight, fight, fight. What will his next words be? Will he try to unite our country?

Or will he talk about the Democrats as, quote, scum, the press as, quote, enemies of the people, and claim that only he can save our country from the evil that assails it, as never before, from within and without. Let's wait and see. And where is the Democratic candidate who can effectively campaign against Trump now? So that's what I wrote. I do think we have a problem in that the appropriate response to the attempted assassination of a former president, which is, of course, horror and sympathy and a concerted effort to get to the bottom of what happened, all of this will serve,

as so much has in Trump's life, to normalize him as a political figure. But he is not a normal political figure. The fact that we could rationally worry that our society might be pitched into something like a civil war had that bullet done more than grazed his ear, we are here in large measure because of what Trump has done to our society. He has poisoned our political landscape with lies. Lies about a stolen election. It's not just Trump. It's also social media.

And now it's figures like Elon, who have become fairly Trumpian. It's this taste for conspiracy theory. But Trump has been stoking this and riding atop all of it for nearly a decade. This moment is as perilous as it is, in large measure, because of Trump. And the fact that talking about that now will be condemned everywhere right of center as an incitement to further political violence, as yet another instance of dangerous hyperbole that almost got Trump killed. All of this is upside down. No one has turned up the temperature more than Trump. When Nancy Pelosi's husband

got his head bashed in by a hammer-wielding maniac and Trump supporter. Trump joked about it. That's the environment that has been created here. The Democrats have contributed very little to those kinds of norm violations. I've said a lot about what's wrong with the left, but you cannot accuse the Biden team of normalizing political violence. Trump has been normalizing political violence for nearly nine years. But the fact that it is now even more difficult to talk about who he is, the fact that now he gets to go to the Republican convention and pretend to be a uniter,

rumor has it that he intends to take the moral high ground here. It will be interesting to see how long he can maintain that pose. That's not the sort of person he is. Everything we knew about Trump before Saturday is still true, even though he was almost killed by an assassin's bullet. But I will be the first to concede that the Democrats are in a very difficult position, compounded, of course, by the fact that they can't seem to figure out how to get a truly unelectable candidate out of the way so that they can run somebody who can speak fluidly about the most important issues we face as a country.

What such a person will be able to say about Trump in the aftermath of this that will be politically palatable? That will be a very interesting high wire act, but we shall see. Anyway, as I said, I'm planning to speak with Anne Applebaum later in the week. No doubt she'll have a thought or two on this topic. Until next time.