The attempt on Trump’s life makes this the darkest modern presidential campaign

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

With the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, a bleak election season only got that much darker. The violence that has been prevalent in the political discourse, almost all of it coming from Trump’s supporters, has erupted into the open. Instead of bringing the country together, it threatens to pull everything apart, as the immediate responses of many Republicans show. And in a perverse way it may even prove to benefit Trump’s campaign.

What motivated the shooter, a 20-year-old who was a registered Republican but also once donated $15 to a progressive cause, may never be known. Attributing logic to the actions of assassins is often foolhardy. The last attempt on a president was in 1981, when John Hinkley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan in an attempt to impress Jodie Foster, with whom Hinkley was obsessed. The reasons for assassins’ actions are often mental health issues and warped political views. It’s always possible that this was just another mass shooter event, at which a former president happened to be present.

But for the conspiracy-addled world of MAGA, it doesn’t much matter what the truth is. The assassination attempt only underscores their deepest beliefs. “Joe Biden sent the orders,” tweeted Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) within minutes of the shooting. (Collins is not only a conspiracy theorist; he’s also a homophobe.)

Not to be outdone, Elon Musk, who has turned the social media platform X into a right-wing playground, wondered whether the Secret Service’s failure was “deliberate.” As a reminder, Musk was a leading proponent of the idea that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband was involved in a gay tryst when he was brutally attacked by a man who broke into his house.

For the religious right, the assassination attempt is confirmation that…