Trump assassination attempt: We were only inches away from a civil war

It appears that a crazed assassin missed former President Donald Trump by inches. One or more of the shots killed a spectator sitting behind Trump, according to initial news reports.

To be clear, the shooter narrowly missed a bloody civil war.

The shooter’s intentions are almost irrelevant. Trump is so despised by a large part of this country and so loved by another part that his assassination would spark even more violence.

President Joe Biden would, to quote one of his phrases, be “hit on the mark.” Trump’s supporters would look for ways to retaliate. Violent Antifa extremists would rise up in support of the assassin.

Just think of what happened when Hamas murdered and raped thousands of Israelis in October 2023 – anti-Israel activists came out of hiding and attacked Israel. Just think of what happened after a transgender gunman murdered students at the Christian school she attended: there was an attempt to mobilize the transgender community.

Both Trump opponents and Trump defenders would have been spurred into action. And there are many reasons to believe that things would have turned out pretty badly in that case.

In the United States, most people have no memory of a political assassination. To put it bluntly, throwing Trump out of office would improve the Democrats’ chances in November. If a party were to improve its political chances through assassination, the reaction would be extremely violent.

I don’t think that if Trump had been assassinated, there would have been a civil war lasting years. But there would have been weeks or months of political violence.