Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
We begin with the words of the daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, Patti Davis, writing for The New York Times about yesterday’s assassination attempt on former president and the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
I don’t know where Donald Trump’s family members were when bullets were fired at his Pennsylvania rally, injuring him, killing one attendee and seriously injuring two others. I think I do know the shock that they’re feeling. For all of the apparatus around a president or a presidential candidate, for all the planning, the security, it still comes down to this: They are flesh and blood, they are human beings just like the rest of us, and their lives can change in a split second. It takes only one bullet to bring that fact home.
America is far more angry and far more violent now than it was in 1981. I don’t know if this event will soften any of that. I don’t know if the Trump family will have the same experience I did — that of a nation setting politics aside and simply responding in a human and humane way. I also don’t know how, or if, this experience will change Mr. Trump. My father believed that God spared him for a very specific reason, to end the Cold War with the Soviet Union, to try to reach some kind of agreement on nuclear weapons. It’s possible that what he and Mikhail Gorbachev achieved might not have happened had he not been shot. That’s the other part of being reminded of your fragility as a human being: You are reminded that time is precious and it’s imperative to use its gift in the most meaningful way you can. But how any individual interprets that realization is impossible to predict.
Fair enough.
David A. Graham of The Atlantic points out that the Trump campaign’s repeated encouragement and endorsement of political violence seems to have come full circle.
The incident seems likely to escalate what is already an extremely tense election cycle. Trump is leading polls with a campaign centered on retribution for his political adversaries; he has promised to be a dictator on his first day back in the Oval Office, though only the first day. Meanwhile, Biden’s status as the Democratic Party candidate is in question.
If this was an assassination attempt on Trump, that would be rare but not unheard-of. President Ronald Reagan survived a shooting in 1981. Former President Theodore Roosevelt was injured by a gunshot during his own attempt to return to the White House in 1912. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was killed during his 1968 campaign for president. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy were all fatally shot while in office.
Trump’s campaign rallies have frequently witnessed violence or the threat of it, though not in the past directed at the candidate. Protesters demonstrating against Trump have been assaulted, and Trump himself has encouraged attacks against them.
Kira Lerner of The Guardian points out that according to a recent survey, more people seem to be in favor of “violence against Trump” than for violence in favor of him.
A survey conducted in late June from the University of Chicago found that there is now more support for violence against Trump (10% of American adults, or 26 million people) compared with violence in favor of Trump (6.9%, or 18 million people). Until January, the survey showed there was more support for violence in favor of Trump.
And of the 26 million American adults who support violence to prevent Trump from regaining the presidency, more than 30% own guns and almost 80% have access to internet organizational tools. [...]
According to the survey, which was first shared with the Guardian as part of a series on political violence and attitudes towards democracy, the underlying causes of support for violence on both sides of the aisle both stem from distrust of the establishment and beliefs in conspiracy theories.
On both sides, those that support violence are predominantly urban Americans.
Alan Feuer of The New York Times also cites the most recent survey of University of Chicago political science professor and the director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, Robert Pape.
It seems that Pape issued this hastily created Powerpoint-like presentation, dated July 13, 2024, in lieu of the publication of his latest full report, which makes at least one potentially incendiary claim.
Alison Durr, Mary Spicuzza, Ricardo Torres, and Quinn Clark of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report that there are no schedule or security changes at the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee.
Trump is scheduled to formally accept the nomination to run for a second term in the White House during the RNC on Thursday evening at Fiserv Forum.
Whether there will be any changes to schedules or security for the RNC, which officially begins Monday in downtown Milwaukee, was not clear Saturday evening.
The Trump campaign released a statement late Saturday saying: "President Trump looks forward to joining you all in Milwaukee as we proceed with our convention to nominate him to serve as the 47th President of the United States. As our party's nominee, President Trump will continue to share his vision to Make America Great Again."
A spokesperson for the RNC's host committee told the Journal Sentinel there were "no changes planned at this time" for the committee's convention welcome party scheduled for Sunday at the Summerfest grounds at Henry Maier Festival Park.
Sarah Ellison, Cat Zakrzewski, and Clara Ence Morse of The Washington Post take a look at the misinformation sewer that begin immediately after the assassination attempt on Trump.
Some accounts from the left of the political spectrum immediately claimed that the shooting was a “false flag” operation perpetrated by Trump’s own supporters. Some on the far right accused President Biden of ordering a hit on a political rival.
“Incidents of political violence spawn conspiracy theories and false narratives when people try to spin the event to suit their various agendas,” Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told The Washington Post. “This incident is no different, with people concocting ‘false flag’ conspiracies and even blaming innocent people for either committing this crime or inspiring it.”
The dynamic is only exacerbated, experts say, by the current political environment where Americans increasingly cannot agree on a common set of facts and exist in alternate — and separate — realities.
Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson of The New York Times write that even some experts fighting against disinformation feel that they are fighting a losing battle.
Holding the line against misinformation and disinformation is demoralizing and sometimes dangerous work, requiring an unusual degree of optimism and doggedness. Increasingly, however, even the most committed warriors are feeling overwhelmed by the onslaught of false and misleading content online.
Researchers have learned a great deal about the misinformation problem over the past decade: They know what types of toxic content are most common, the motivations and mechanisms that help it spread and who it often targets. The question that remains is how to stop it.
A critical mass of research now suggests that tools such as fact checks, warning labels, prebunking and media literacy are less effective and expansive than imagined, especially as they move from pristine academic experiments into the messy, fast-changing public sphere.
Finally, in other news, Mark Norris of Houston Public Media reports that more than 500,000 customer remain without power in Houston after Hurricane Beryl.
As of 6 p.m., 510,000 customers were without power. The company's goal is to restore power to 85 percent of the 2.2 million customers who lost power during Hurricane Beryl by end of day Sunday.
"Our crews are working through the heat, storms and rain to address the more than 12,100 downed trees, as well as the impacts of billboards, portions of metal roofs and other debris carried by sustained high winds into poles, lines and other equipment," a CenterPoint spokesperson said in a statement Saturday.
That still means hundreds of thousands in the Houston region would be without electricity one week after Beryl struck the region as a category one hurricane.