In the wake of the horrific attempt to shoot Donald Trump, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Axios reported Monday that advisers close to the former president say he “plans to seize his moment by toning down his Trumpiness” and by “dialing up efforts to unite a tinder-box America.”
Because Trump has suddenly stared death in the face, the report suggested, he has attained benevolence toward his political foes, which will manifest itself at this week’s GOP convention with a “unifying” display. As Tucker Carlson told Axios: “Getting shot changes a man.”
Tell that to Trump himself. Only a few hours after that report appeared, Trump uncorked a new rant on Truth Social that left zero doubt that he remains fully committed to the range of positions that make Trump and his movement such a profound threat to democratic stability in this country—the very same ones that have done so much to bring about the “tinder box” that Axios imagines he is now preoccupied with addressing.
This led some to chortle that media predictions of a Trump “pivot”—a stock joke at this point—have imploded yet again. But it should occasion something else too. If media figures are so eager to depict Trump as unifying, then let’s lay down a hard metric: Before such claims are made, the absolute minimum threshold he must clear is fully renouncing the authoritarian designs he is threatening to inflict on this country and its people if reelected president.
Needless to say, that’s not going to happen.
Here’s Trump’s full rant:
As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!
Note that Trump is positioning himself as a “Uniting” figure (when he capitalizes words, you know he’s branding himself) while also reiterating that every single legal proceeding he faces is entirely illegitimate. And note especially his evocation of “the January 6th Hoax,” which really means that Trump remains fully committed to pardoning the January 6 rioters—and to canceling the ongoing prosecution of himself for insurrection-related crimes.
Those positions are irredeemably incompatible with any stated goal of unifying the country, at a very fundamental level. They embody the notion that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with trying to cling to power illegitimately, through violent means, in defiance of the votes and political aspirations of a majority of his fellow Americans. They also embody the idea that he and his movement should not be subject to the same laws that the rest of us are. Trump is telegraphing that he won’t back off any of that in the slightest.
The effort to assassinate Trump was an abomination and the enemy of the rule of law. Yet it’s also true that Republicans are cynically trying to exploit the shooting: Many have blamed it on the message from Democrats that Trump poses a fundamental threat to democracy, self-rule, and the American experiment, claiming this incited the shooting. Clearly, as Brian Beutler aptly notes, the game is to remove from the political agenda something that’s both true and politically damaging to Trump: that he actually does threaten all those things.
Worse, Trump advisers plainly want journalists to accept the premise in his tweet-rant: that the real threat to national stability is the continued effort to hold Trump and his movement accountable for their crimes against democracy; that moving past all these crimes—which Trump would do by voiding all of them, including his own—is itself the true precondition for achieving national healing.
There are signs this scam may have some success. First, some media coverage is already slipping into a subtle fallacy. The GOP argument right now is that Democrats are depicting Trump as an existential threat to the country and this inspired the shooting. It’s not lost on news organizations that Trump too constantly depicts Democrats in similar terms: He regularly says that electing them will mean “we won’t have a country” and that a Democratic victory will only be achieved via illegitimate means. News accounts have been pointing out that both sides offer a version of this message about the other.
But these accounts often don’t make it clear that in making this charge, only one side—the Democrats—is doing so while remaining broadly faithful to what the facts actually do dictate. Indeed, Democrats are remaining faithful to what Trump and his allies are saying in their own words. Trump has not just vowed to pardon the insurrectionists and treat ongoing prosecutions of himself as a dead letter but also has refused to say he’ll accept the results of the election and has vowed to prosecute his opponents without cause, even as his allies promise to ferociously unleash the state on designated enemies of MAGA.
News accounts should make it clear that it actually is not beyond the pale for Democrats to charge that Trump poses a foundational threat to republican governance. Nor is it beyond the pale to charge that MAGA is the only major faction in American life that valorizes political violence and sees its utilization in service of Trump and his goals as good. After all, this is precisely what it means to vow to pardon the January 6 rioters and to perpetually hail them as patriots and heroes. A media failure to clarify all this will help him pose as a post-shooting unifier.
What’s more, as the Axios story suggests, the idea that Trump is pivoting to “unity” will be very hard for some media figures to resist. Taking note of this temptation, Tim Miller joked: “Can we wait to actually see some evidence before declaring him Mandela now?”
I propose we go further, by insisting on the following: No calling Trump a “unifier” until he renounces plans to pardon the January 6 rioters and prosecute his opponents, stops casting the application of the law to himself and his movement as inherently corrupt, repudiates his threat to terminate parts of the Constitution, unequivocally commits to accepting the election results, and tells his allies to stop planning to treat any election loss as illegitimate in advance. And that’s just a start.
As Trump’s new rant makes clear, he has no intention of doing any such thing. If and when he doesn’t, the idea of Trump as unifying figure will again be unmasked as what it’s always been, every time such “pivots” are promised: a sick joke that merits nothing but mockery, derision, and contempt.
