New Matilda editor Chris Graham has long been a lover of irony. Which is why today’s failed assassination attempt on former US president Donald Trump has been a confusing and emotional time for him. We’ll let Chris explain.
Firstly, a politician who describes himself as “the most pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment president” in US history getting himself shot is not only deeply ironic, it’s objectively funny.
Having said that, I appreciate that my sense of humour on that front isn’t going to be shared by a lot of folk, and so I’d hasten to add… shame about the innocent people around Trump, at least one of whom ended up copping the headshot intended for the former US president.
But as Trump himself might say, ‘He’s a hero because he was shot in the head? He’s not a hero. I like supporters who weren’t shot in the head.’
Secondly, the shooting happened at a political rally for the self-described “most pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment president” in US history, where people apparently aren’t allowed to bring guns.
This is what I consider a ‘cruel irony’.
I think if you’re going to try and gain power and profit by exploiting the deaths of other people, including lots and lots of children, then you should be forced to ‘walk that walk’ and allow the people who come to see you ‘talk that talk’ bring their guns with them.
It’d certainly make for more interesting presidential races, although so violent is American society that it’s unlikely any candidate would live long enough to get elected.
In any event, the shooter in this case was positioned outside the political rally for ‘the most pro-gun president in US history’. Which is not ironic at all – it makes perfect sense. What is ironic is that that gunman was taken out by another gunman (a Secret Service sniper) who was positioned inside the political rally for the ‘most pro-gun president in US history’, where guns weren’t permitted. Confusing irony.
Americans do irony better than any other country on earth. Mostly, it’s unintended, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful. And today’s circus is not only no exception, in Trumpese (a language in which I’m proud to say I’m fluent), today’s events would be considered the ‘most ironic in recorded history’. Because everything is bigger than God’s underpants in TrumpWorld. Even irony.
Exhibit A: In 2018, a year into Trump’s presidency, a 19-year-old armed with an AR-15 slaughtered 17 students and staff at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Trump flatly refused to crackdown on military-style assault rifles, but he did suggest he might look at raising the age for accessing firearms from 18 to 21.
And then under pressure from the National Rifle Association, Trump did nothing.
The guy who shot Trump today was 20-years-old. He was using an AR-15 military-style assault rifle.
Oh, and his surname was ‘Crooks’. You can’t make this shit up.
Want more irony? Sure. Conspiracy theories have instantly sprung up that the Trump shooting was staged. That it was a false flag. Ordinarily, that’s the domain of Alex Jones and QAnon supporters, and while I’m not suggesting they won’t find a way to catch up over the next few days, so far, it’s the loons on the far-left claiming we’re all being played. Dark irony.
But wait, there’s more. Trump just so happened to cheat ‘death by firearm’ one day after Alec Baldwin, a Hollywood star best known for playing Trump, cheated a criminal case for causing the ‘death by firearm’ of a staff member on a film set. I’m not actually sure if that is irony, but it’s definitely something.
And this is definitely irony: In a political week when everyone is focussed on how frail and confused Joe Biden is, it was Donald Trump who had to be helped offstage by six men. And that was after falling over, losing his hat and at least one of his shoes. That I would class as ‘funny irony’. Tish boom, I’m here till Thursday. Try the fish!
And here’s some more: If you haven’t already noticed, as Trump is being shot, a lady standing behind him is waving a placard which reads, “Joe Biden You’re Fired”.
The only way this could be more ironic is if the woman holding the sign turned out to be the member of the audience who died (thankfully, she wasn’t). And if we’re going for irony overload, she would also have been an ‘illegal immigrant’, because that’s who Trump was busy demonising and lying about when the shots started ringing out.
“That arrow is the lowest amount of illegal immigration ever in recorded history,” bragged Trump, directing the crowd to a large screen off camera that purported to show illegal immigration at record low numbers under his presidency.
That particular lie, which Trump repeats at most of his rallies, has already been fact-checked and proven to be false. It wasn’t even the lowest illegal immigration numbers in the last decade (that was in 2015, under Obama) let alone recorded history. But it’s a Trump rally. So, you know.
Trump continued: “And then the worst president in the history of our country took over, and look what happened to our country. Probably 20 million [illegal immigrants]”.
Just 30 seconds earlier, Trump had claimed he was relying on figures that came “straight out of government services” to (falsely) claim illegal immigration under him was the lowest it had ever been. Irony. Those same government figures suggest that under Biden, it’s been about 10 million, half of what Trump was claiming. More irony.
And what a ‘tremendous irony’ it would have been if the bullet that nicked Trump’s ear had been one centimetre to the right, so that the last two things Donald Trump ever said on this earth were both lies.
In the irony stakes, that would have been up there with the most ironic death of a US president so far, when Franklin D. Roosevelt woke one morning to declare, “I’ve got a terrific headache,” before keeling over dead from a cerebral haemorrhage. Understated irony.
Now here’s what I would class as a ‘bold irony’: As a journalist, I’m going to speak ‘the truth’, and that’s almost certainly going to get me in trouble (if I’m not already). Here goes anyway….
I don’t think you should shoot anyone. I think that’s a terrible idea. But if you’re going to shoot someone like Donald Trump, then I don’t think you should miss. Why? Because if you only graze him, he’s going to dine out on it for the rest of his life. You’ve just made a vagabond a hero. How ironic.
The truth is, of course, that Trump – a rapist and convicted shyster, which are probably two of the least of his crimes – was already a hero to a significant percentage of the American population. I can’t for the life of me understand why, but conveniently it brings us to the real heart of this dilemma, which I happen to think is quite ironic.
Trump is definitely a problem, but he’s never actually been the problem. A lot of people, particularly on the left, lose sight of that – ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ is a real thing.
The problem is that a lot of Americans – tens of millions of them – think Trump is a rock star and that his grandiose narcissism and complete lack of morals is a good thing. The reason so many Americans support Trump is because to them, he’s relatable… which, if you think about it, says some pretty uncomfortable things about tens of millions of Americans.
My point being, it’s US society that has eroded. Trump might have sped it up a bit, but he didn’t cause it. He’s just the scab that’s formed from a much bigger, much more entrenched decay.
Speaking of decay, shortly after news broke of Trump’s wounding, Joe Biden fronted media to try and head off any suggestion he might have been disappointed by the gunman’s poor aim.
“We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this,” said Biden.
There’s nothing especially ironic about that statement, so we’ll have to use our imagination a little here… let’s pretend that just as Biden finishes explaining that ‘political violence is never the answer’ (which as of 10 minutes ago officially became the single most uttered phrase in US political/media history), he’s interrupted by a staffer seeking his urgent signature on a cheque for a few billion dollars worth of bombs and tank shells destined for Israel.
What a joke. If political violence is never the answer, then how come it’s always the FIRST response when it suits American interests? If political violence is never the answer, why is Joe Biden rubber-stamping a genocide in Gaza?
Political violence has certainly suited Donald Trump on more than one occasion. Let’s forget about him riling up a political mob to storm the US Capitol (resulting in injuries to more than 100 police, and five deaths) for a minute and just focus on the violence he specifically and deliberately promotes at every rally he’s ever held.
In between footage of Trump mocking disabled people and bragging about grabbing women ‘on the pussy’, there’s so many videos of Trump trying to excite crowds with talks of violence that it seems silly to post just one. But here’s one anyway.
The only reason we don’t have a sound-bite at today’s rally of Trump promoting some kind of political violence is because he was shot a few minutes after taking the stage. But instead of fronting that reality, media and political commentators across America are tonight waxing lyrical about how ‘This is a terrible day for America’.
If by ‘terrible’ they mean ‘typical’, then yeah, sure, it’s a ‘terrible’ day for America. It’s also another missed opportunity for a discussion rooted in actual reality, and if that were to occur, then we’d all have to face the top three performers in today’s ‘circus of ironies’.
The third biggest irony here is that a man who has lived a life of rape and privilege, and who spent years dodging the Vietnam draft by pretending he had bone spurs on his heels, is now considered brave by a nation obsessed with violence and veterans.
The second biggest irony is that as he was being bundled off stage, having just been shot, Trump was yelling ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’
And ironically, that sparked the biggest irony in all of this: as Trump started pumping his fists in the air, an enraptured crowd responded by chanting ‘USA! USA! USA!’
I think you’ll find that’s a reference to the very country that this man and his supporters are hell-bent on destroying.
Gotta love that irony.