The Deafening Silence Of Academia And Corporate America After The Trump Assassination Attempt

When authorities arrested the man who shot and nearly killed Ronald Reagan in March of 1981, he asked them a question. He wanted to know whether the Academy Awards, which were scheduled to take place that same evening, would be delayed.

Ultimately, the answer was yes: The Academy Awards were postponed for 24 hours. Gregory Peck said the assassination attempt “brought to mind” the murders of the Kennedys, John Lennon and Martin Luther King. The producer of the awards called the shooting a “tragedy.” Meanwhile, at the NCAA championship basketball game,18,000 fans in Philadelphia held a moment of silence.

When Reagan joked to his doctors, “I hope you’re all Republicans,” his doctor — a liberal — famously responded: “Today, we are all Republicans.”

Forty three years after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump was nearly killed on live television. And in the aftermath, as you’ve probably noticed, there’s been no similar moment of national unity. Entertainment venues aren’t cancelling events or holding a moment of silence. They’re doing the opposite, in fact. A member of the gimmick rock band “Tenacious D” just told a crowd that he wished the assassin had killed the former president. You’ve probably seen that video. The New York Times published a full-page spread claiming that Trump had “betrayed America.” CNN and ABC criticized Donald Trump for using the word “fight” just moments after he was shot. Kara Swisher and David Plouffe, the former Obama campaign manager, made jokes about the assassination attempts on their podcast. Listen:

I almost cried watching the afternath of the assassination attempt vs .@realDonaldTrump. @karaswisher and ex-Obama campaign mgr @davidplouffe joked about it. Advertisers support Pivot pod: if a conservative said this about Biden, lib hissyfit.#WhatsBuggingMe on @Ricochet. pic.twitter.com/nDMhkcSk1g

— Dennis Kneale (@denniskneale) July 16, 2024

You don’t have this reaction to the presidential frontrunner nearly dying on national television just three days earlier unless you’re fine with it happening. There’s no other explanation for it. Any normal, well-adjusted person who doesn’t wish death on their political enemies — anyone who cares about the democratic system of government — is still shaken by what happened on Saturday. But not Kara Swisher and David Plouffe. They don’t care at all. And they’re not alone.

While a handful of tech CEOs from Apple to Amazon to Google did post condemnations of political violence, for the most part, from Left wing corners of society, there’s been an outpouring of ambivalence or outright disdain — not sympathy — for the former president.

There are a few different ways you can explain this disparity — this major shift from the 1980s to today. How did we go from a country that came together to mourn this kind of violence, regardless of politics, to a country that doesn’t really care about it — or even endorses it? It’s an important question.

The simple explanation — the one you’ll often hear — is to say that we’re living in a much more “polarized” political climate these days. We’re supposed to accept the idea that violence has simply become normalized. But it’s not particularly compelling because it overlooks the extent to which Leftists, more than conservatives, accept and embrace political violence even while pretending to condemn it categorically.

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

Consider who’s been committing most acts of political violence over the past few years. It’s not conservatives. It was BLM that torched cities and used car lots and churches and attacked Secret Service agents in the summer of 2020. When Trump was inaugurated, Leftists vandalized cars and businesses in the area. A Bernie Sanders supporter shot up a Congressional baseball practice, nearly killing Steve Scalise. It was a leftist who attacked the Family Research Council, supposedly because it was falsely classified as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The one major recent example of Right-wing violence you’ll often hear mentioned is the protest on January 6th, which can only be understood in the context of the 8 months of nationwide rioting — perpetrated by Leftists and endorsed by the Democrats — that preceded it. And, of course, the only person killed on that day was a Right-winger.

Additionally, on social media right now, you’ll find many examples of Leftists openly celebrating the attempted assassination on Trump. It’s striking how comfortable these people are, talking so nonchalantly about the attempted murder of a former president. It’s a window into what Leftist discourse is like in places like San Francisco or Portland. Hatred for conservatives is so normalized, so commonplace, that they don’t think twice about saying something objectively insane in a public forum — something that would have obvious professional ramifications in most of the country, especially if a conservative said it.

So it doesn’t seem like we can just wave our hands and say “polarization” is the issue. What we’re seeing is something closer to dehumanization. Many Americans have been indoctrinated into believing that their political opponents aren’t human and don’t deserve to live.

The other explanation you might hear is that Donald Trump is supposedly a uniquely bad guy. He’s going to end democracy with Project 2025, and so forth. But this isn’t a satisfying explanation either, for a couple of reasons. Obviously, the premise is hysterical nonsense. Project 2025 is the “Russian collusion” of the 2024 election. But even if you accept for the sake of argument the false premise that Donald Trump is this horrible human being, the logic still doesn’t make any sense.

Four years ago, pretty much every Fortune 500 company, government agency and university in this country mourned the death of a horrible human being by the name of George Floyd. Pretty much every single LLC and nonprofit in the universe came out of the woodwork to make that very clear. Even the “National Association of the Deaf” recorded a video for BLM, in sign language, lamenting, “Black deaths at the hands of police officers.” Companies like Nike and Ben & Jerries also got involved. The national funeral went on for months and cost billions of dollars. Watch:

These companies have not pledged a billion dollars towards ending political violence after Donald Trump was almost assassinated. In fact they haven’t issued statements of any kind. They haven’t changed their Instagram profile pictures. They haven’t put out any PSAs. They haven’t said anything. It’s not like these companies are in the habit of ignoring current events. Usually they’re quite vocal about it. Now we have one of the most historic current events that any of us will live through, and we get silence in response. 

Same goes for the major universities in this country.

As Chris Rufo pointed out, “elite universities published an endless number of statements on Black Lives Matter, climate change, MeToo, Stop Asian Hate, Ukraine, and Hamas, but couldn’t be bothered about the attempted assassination of an American president.” And that’s true. Universities that have become de facto political action committees are suddenly silent when the most serious political assassination attempt of the century takes place on live television. 

For example, here was Harvard’s statement in June of 2020: “The Harvard community is deeply distressed by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and many more Black Americans at the hands of those who have promised to protect communities and uphold the rule of law. Black lives matter, and we must use this moment to confront and remedy racial injustice.”

To be clear, these are deaths that had absolutely nothing to do with Harvard’s campus. None of these people died anywhere near the school. And “Tony McDade” apparently stabbed a guy to death, then pointed a gun at a cop before getting shot. This is all on body camera, but Harvard decided that Tony McDade was a martyr, because “Tony McDade” identified as a transgender man. And apparently some news reports accurately described McDade’s gender, which bothered the faculty at Harvard. So Harvard’s more “distressed” by the so-called “misgendering” of a murderer than they are about the attempted murder of the leading presidential candidate.

Not to be outdone, back in 2020, Yale’s women and gender studies department declared that they “stand in solidarity with the protests against the murder of George Floyd, and against state-sanctioned racism and racist police and civilian violence.” They warned that “police violence against people of color, and especially Black people, is a systemic, foundational condition of the United States. Foundational, but nonessential.”

The Yale women and gender studies department has not put out a similar statement post-Trump assassination attempt. Berkeley is also apparently unbothered by the Trump shooting. And that’s a little conspicuous, since Berkeley put out multiple statements about George Floyd. In fact, in his statement announcing the murder of a Berkeley student named Seth Smith, Berkeley’s chancellor still ended up talking about George Floyd. That’s how large George Floyd loomed on campus at the time. He was bigger than the deaths of actual students at Berkeley:

“Many of you may have had a close relationship with Seth and are feeling a sense of loss and disbelief. Others, like many of us, are experiencing stress, grief and anxiety related to the coronavirus pandemic and the recent murders of George Floyd, Riah Milton, and other Black Americans.”

The chancellor actually wrote that, as part of an email announcing a student’s death to the campus. So Berkeley clearly sees enormous societal significance in the death of a drug addict 2,000 miles away. But they’re not so concerned about the attempted murder of the leading presidential frontrunner.

I could go on, listing pretty much every university and Fortune 500 company on the planet. But honestly we don’t have time for that. The point is that all of these institutions either don’t care about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, or they endorse it. And it would be a mistake to conclude that federal government agencies like the Secret Service are immune from this trend. If the Secret Service is ambivalent (at best) about Donald Trump’s safety, then that would explain why they didn’t have that rooftop covered, less than 150 yard away. That would explain why no one has resigned or been fired. It explains why the Secret Service director made up some ridiculous excuse about how the roof was too “slanted” for snipers to sit on, or whatever.

And it explains why — just days after Donald Trump was nearly killed — they’re promoting the same unhinged rhetoric they were before. Here, for example, was Joe Biden yesterday, in a speech to the NAACP, stammering through a claim that Donald Trump wanted to send the National Guard after peaceful BLM protesters. He ignores all the violence and rioting and arson. Watch:

BIDEN TO NAACP: “You peacefully protested George Floyd's murder. Donald Trump called for the National Guard to go after you. What in the hell's the matter with this man?”

“No! I’m serious!” pic.twitter.com/5N9Huib3We

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 17, 2024

This is what’s changed since the 1980s. There’s now a large, influential segment of the population that endorses violence against their political opposition — but for the most part, they won’t admit it outright. Instead, they’re going to pretend it’s “peaceful protest,” as Joe Biden just did. They’re going to refuse to even mention what happened to Donald Trump, even as they mourn their fallen foot soldiers.

This is now the norm in the country that once mourned Reagan across party lines. The Left might not acknowledge that’s what they’re doing. But that’s all the more reason that we should call it out, and prepare accordingly.