This is a picture perfect moment. For all the wrong reasons, but this image is destined for the history books.
July 13, 2024. I have the feeling that it will be remembered like a day almost precisely 80 years ago, July 20, 1944, when another defiant leader emerged, mostly unscathed, from an assassination attempt.
Assassinations do not restore or strengthen democracy. We’ve known that at least since the times of ancient Rome, since Marcus Junius Brutus and co-conspirators assassinated Julius Caesar almost two thousand years ago. Rather than saving the Roman Republic, they hastened its demise.
The only thing worse than the assassination of a tyrant (or a would-be tyrant, as some see Trump) is a failed assassination. Which is what happened 80 years ago in the famed Wolf’s Lair. Ironically, Hitler was also injured in his ears. But far from weakening him, the assassination attempt likely played a role in Germany fighting all the way to the bitter end, as Hitler viewed his survival as a divine moment. What the fallout from the attempt on Trump’s life will be is yet an open question, but there is one thing of which I am sure: it’s going to be bad news for his political opponents and, by extension, for all of us who worry about the future of the Western democratic world order.